>The fact that he sent a force 1/10th the size required for military occupation does tend to suggest that he had a different military goal in mind when he sent the force.
Lol. No.
Explain the military purpose of sending riot police and parade uniforms? Explain the military purpose of getting 10,000 of his most capable special forces troops slaughtered in 3 days? Explain the 30 mile convoy?
The simplest explanation is that he in fact did believe all the shit he said on TV about Ukrainians secretly yearning to be Russians, that they would welcome the overthrow of their government, etc. That he believed Russia was the 2nd most powerful military in the world, that Ukrainians would immediately surrender, that it would be easy.
All of which is in fact backed up by intercepts and intelligence as well as the entire state narrative in the early war.
>Furthermore presenting that assumption as the sole piece of "evidence" that proves someone wrong is just...wow.
What? It's not the sole piece of evidence...
You need to read the reports about what actually happened on the ground. JM did not "nail it", he was clueless. They've been planning this for a long time. They thought they had deeply infiltrated all levels of Ukrainian government with spies whom would be able to paralyze the response (and to be fair, in the South, they did).
Let’s not forget that the Russian state media also accidentally posted an article on the victory of the war, which details pretty much everything you’ve said.
>Lol. No. Explain the military purpose of sending riot police
OMON are not just riot police and are routinely sent on Russian military expeditions (e.g. there are some in Syria). Theres some evidence that a few hundred of the invading force of 15,000 (cite: Wikipedia) were OMON.
The question you apparently haven't asked yourself is "if their goal was occupation, why did they send a few hundred OMON troops rather than the hundred thousand they'd actually need?"
>The simplest explanation is that he in fact did believe all the shit he said on TV about Ukrainians secretly yearning to be Russians
The most likely explanation is that he was primarily gambling on a quick collapse of Ukrainian resistance and the ability to pull off a coup, before placing Opposition Platform for Life (who already had ~44 seats) in charge.
The backup/secondary plan was likely to provide a distraction such that the southern and eastern forces could link up and secure Russia's main geopolitical achilles heel - the land bridge to crimea.
I think you got confused. The attack on Kiev had 16,000 troops total. It's unclear how many were OMON but it's clear that it was no more than a few hundred.
In no way, shape or form does that justify presuming that this was an occupation force - with or without uniforms.
Lol. No.
Explain the military purpose of sending riot police and parade uniforms? Explain the military purpose of getting 10,000 of his most capable special forces troops slaughtered in 3 days? Explain the 30 mile convoy?
The simplest explanation is that he in fact did believe all the shit he said on TV about Ukrainians secretly yearning to be Russians, that they would welcome the overthrow of their government, etc. That he believed Russia was the 2nd most powerful military in the world, that Ukrainians would immediately surrender, that it would be easy.
All of which is in fact backed up by intercepts and intelligence as well as the entire state narrative in the early war.
>Furthermore presenting that assumption as the sole piece of "evidence" that proves someone wrong is just...wow.
What? It's not the sole piece of evidence...
You need to read the reports about what actually happened on the ground. JM did not "nail it", he was clueless. They've been planning this for a long time. They thought they had deeply infiltrated all levels of Ukrainian government with spies whom would be able to paralyze the response (and to be fair, in the South, they did).
https://static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unconventional-Operations-...
https://static.rusi.org/special-report-202202-ukraine-web.pd...