Question that must be asked: who is responsible for such a vast overestimation of Russian capabilities? It certainly prevented the war from well, being prevented.
The version I heard was that US and UK intelligence had a very good picture of what the upper echelons of Russian military command believed. And that the Russians themselves vastly overestimated their own capabilities.
So it seemed to be the case of poor quality that's hard to quantify, right? Like if you made a bunch of aerial photos of an Italian division vs a Waffen SS division in 1941 you'd probably come to a conclusion they were about equal in capabilities, and Italians themselves believed the same, while in fact that was super far from truth. Is this what you are talking about?
I think so. The Russian command likely got optimistic reports from below about their combat readiness. The UK and US had better views into the command conference rooms than their views on the quality of the force on the ground. While as @hkpack said, the Ukraine command had a good understanding of the quality of the Russian force and thus believed they wouldn't go for it. A very a tragic shit-show which could have been avoided if Ukraine had gotten the support it needed before the invasion instead of well into it.
This is correct. Turning a catastrophic loss into something that maybe kinda looks like a victory has been a propaganda coup for Russia. That's done in this case by inflicting disproportional pain on Ukraine. But remember, most often in war both sides lose. Russia does not win if Ukraine suffers. Russia wins if it achieves it's goals, which it has not and will not.
Russia has lost, but is substituting making another suffer as a victory, even when that in no way is helpful to Russia or it's people. Ukraine has always lost in the sense that this war was never going to be anything but a net-negative for them, and has won in the sense that they've retained most of their goals (remaining a sovereign state).
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[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 37.6 ms ] threadThis in turn colored the western estimates.
"The Ukraine-russia war is over. Putin has lost and he knows it"
https://medium.com/@noclador/victorious-ukraine-2d24634d0afd
Russia has lost, but is substituting making another suffer as a victory, even when that in no way is helpful to Russia or it's people. Ukraine has always lost in the sense that this war was never going to be anything but a net-negative for them, and has won in the sense that they've retained most of their goals (remaining a sovereign state).