Comments by "Dale Crocker" (@dalecrocker3213) on "Russian mercenaries build massive anti-tank defense" video.

They've got what they want, now they must defend it
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@Viktor-gk5ri All I'm saying is that even if this claim was made it can only have been to encourage the troops. Putin must have known it to be nonsense. His whole conduct of the war points to it being designed to sap enemy strength, not to conquer.
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@Viktor-gk5ri 1) Pep talks to the troops. And I don't know if this was even said anyway. Putin must have realised that only in Donbass would his troops be welcomed. 2) Prior bombing of territories you wish to conquer is a general rule of war. Shock and awe in Iraq for example. 3) Rather a romantic view, I think. 4)You are working on the assumption that the Russians actually want these cities.They do not. The sole purpose of the operation is to attempt to cripple the Ukrainian armed forces, thus making them too weak to invade Crimea and Donbass
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Alex Perez All Russia ever wanted was Crimea and Donbass. Kherson would be a bonus, but is probably more use to Russia as a killing ground. I will remind you that Russia still holds Crimea and around 20% of Ukraine, including most of its coastline and much of its steel, coal and gas supplies.
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Alex Perez What Russian land has Ukraine taken exactly? None at all. It has merely reclaimed parts of Ukraine from the Russians who only wanted it to use as a killing ground anyway. This is not a war of conquest, it is a war of depletion. The objective is to secure Donbass and Crimea and to seriously weaken Ukraine's military capacity to retake them.
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@theAverageJoe25 I am not a Russian and I'm not backpedalling and nor am I making propaganda. So that's three things you're wrong about from the start. All evidence points to the fact that Russia is doing its best to minimise civilian casualties. Apart from anything else there are a hell of a lot of Russians in Ukraine! The object of the exercise is for Russia to hold on to what it's got, plus perhaps an advance in the two Donbass republics to exclude the Ukrainians from their northern sectors. That, and keeping Crimea, are the sum total of Russia's ambitions and always have been.
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We'll be seeing more of this. The Russians are digging in for the winter.
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@Viktor-gk5ri The Russians never wanted the whole of Ukraine. It would be like swallowing a porcupine and result in a lengthy and expensive civil war. If they wanted Kiev why didn't they bombard it before the ground attack instead of after? The invasion is simply about destroying as much of the Ukrainian army as possible in order to prevent it invading existing Russian held territories.
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@Viktor-gk5ri I don't think Putin cares much how many men he loses so long as Ukrainians die in the process. Nor do I believe he is stupid or mad. I don't think Putin has a great deal of choice once it became clear that Ukraine was likely to be included in NATO's next tranche of empire building. Russia and Ukraine have a unique relationship and the "westernisation" of Ukraine would be extremely harmful to Russian prestige as well as affecting it economically - the nuclear threat aside. Finland and Sweden joining NATO is neither here nor there to him very much No, this is America's war and poor Ukraine is just being used to advance the policies of American warmongers now they have shoehorned a puppet into the White House.
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@gloomndoom If they wanted to take these cities then why didn't they bombard them first? That's the normal method. Try to get it through your thick skull that the invasion was designed primarily to destroy the Ukrainian army in order to make it too weak to invade Crimea and Donbass. What its strength is now only its top commanders know. The Russians are digging in for the winter. They have unused troops -mercenaries from Chechen and veterans of the war in Syria as well as the armies of the separatists who have been holding off the Ukrainians for eight years. And they've got electricity too.
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@Viktor-gk5ri Looking at it from the outside it strikes me that Putin has thrown raw troops and antiquated armour into the first phase of the special military operation. Equally so, he has conscripted reserves and, from what one hears, dissidents have a fair chance of being selected. The real war is about to take place now. Ukraine too has been forced to conscript civilians and they will, in all probability, have to face Russian and Chechen troops who already have considerable battle experience. What is NATO for if not to intimidate Russia and to provide job and wealth opportunities for senior military personnel and arms dealers? It's a con that has been going on since 1945 and, as I said, getting Ukraine on board even15 years hence would be a blow to Russia's pride and sense of itself. Ukraine is Little Russia after all and would not even exist were it not for Russia, which created it. The idea of it becoming a whore of the Great Satan is just too much to bear.
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@Viktor-gk5ri I think I had best refer you to Colonel Douglas MacGregor and Professor John Mearsheimer who can both explain the position better than I can. They both have YouTube channels as well as having written extensively on the subject. A far as the history of Ukraine is concerned, while it is true that the Vikings created a civilisation based in Kiev which then spread up through the river system to eventually found Moscow, much of the surrounding area was steppe and forest, peopled by various wandering tribes. The Ukraine we know today was created by the Russian Empire and by the Soviet Union. With regard to your point about NATO membership, I merely point out that while membership by most countries is probably a source of minor irritation to Putin, that of Ukraine would be in another category. My point about "dissidents" is that because the objective of the first stages of the operation is to mop up the Ukrainian army with little regard for its own casualties, getting rid of people likely to oppose the present regime would be killing two birds with one stone.
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@ad_astra468 True enough.
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