Two years ago, the Ukrainian Armed Forces defied expectations immediately. Days before Russia’s massive combined arms incursion, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley spoke for the U.S. military when he predicted to Congress that Kyiv would fall within 72 hours.
Many military analysts similarly predicted the Russian Armed Forces would quickly rout the overmatched Ukrainians. American leaders encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to leave the country, lest Russian troops assassinate him.
This whole narrative has to have been pure bullshit, right? The West had been arming Ukraine since 2014, Merkel even admitted the Minsk II agreements were just stalling for that purpose, and if you sell Ukraine as this hopelessly outmatched smol bean that’s certainly doomed, it’s easier to rally public support when it “somehow” beats all odds to hang in the fight. It’s classic setting expectations at zero so anything looks like success, and fits with how often the media has ran with the “full scale” descriptor of the Russian invasion.
This whole narrative has to have been pure bullshit, right? The West had been arming Ukraine since 2014, Merkel even admitted the Minsk II agreements were just stalling for that purpose, and if you sell Ukraine as this hopelessly outmatched smol bean that’s certainly doomed, it’s easier to rally public support when it “somehow” beats all odds to hang in the fight. It’s classic setting expectations at zero so anything looks like success, and fits with how often the media has ran with the “full scale” descriptor of the Russian invasion.
Yeah, but now this is the canon in the west that has to be incorporated into any future narratives.