The Russians' plan to drive to Kyiv and declare victory is dead. If they're going to win, they're going to have to grind it out.
Guy Elster @guyelster
Huh. It looks like some sort of annexation or de facto annexation of Ukraine was the plan.
пані Маруся @sea_inside3
This was a (foreseeably) disastrous course of action by Putin; many US hawks (to say nothing of weirdo Putin fanboys like Trump) have spent years overrating his savvy which has just been doing loose poker strategy in a game with unbounded downside.
I beg people who write this kind of thing to take a single second to think about the problems with lumping all "democracies" and "autocracies" in a single category theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
"Just remember this. You’ve made a choice, and that choice tells your community that you are absolutely, totally, 100 percent comfortable with killing someone."
Absolutely.
But worth saying that this is not inevitable … like suppose (hypothetically!) the USA were run by a blustery hotheaded egomaniac with compromising Kremlin ties who commands zero respect on the world stage and views every topic through personal enrichment.
Peter Baker @peterbakernyt
Omar Wasow @owasow
@NateSilver538 The so-called experts in the American intelligence community got this [checks notes] totally right.
Great to see Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer all join Team Normalcy this week while Putin holds meetings at his weird long table.
Seung Min Kim @seungminkim
Long thread about how I think the first 96 hours have gone, still very early/incomplete impressions. The initial Russian operation was premised on terrible assumptions about Ukraine’s ability & will to fight, and an unworkable concept of operations. Moscow badly miscalculated. 1/
Actually not a bad idea. Russians need to rise up and this would certainly encourage them, while not offering any free passes away.
Polly P 🇺🇦 @PollyLegend