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Comment by terafo | Hacker News Reader

It is not about trucks. If you've been paying attention, you saw that they just went for Kyiv and didn't bother capturing cities or territory, which left their supply lines VERY vulnerable to the Ukrainian army. And they didn't think that the operation will be longer than a couple of days, so didn't bother to take many supplies with them. They drastically underestimated the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people's will to fight.

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> And they didn't think that the operation will be longer than a couple of days,

Why would they think that and more important why wouldn't they plan for a non ideal outcome.

Ukraine is a huge country, bigger than iraq with more people, how could you be so sure?

But then again my expertice comes from playing Command & Conquest.

Because their stated goal is basically to capture Kyiv and install their own government. They were expecting that everything would go like Crimean operation, but didn't account for the fact that Ukrainian army evolved since, have lots of experience fighting russia-backed separatists in Donbass region and is much more passionate about fighting than 8 years ago, when russian army conducted Crimean operation.

I don't really understand how they could have expected that, since Ukrainians had been told in NOVEMBER that the operation was coming. (And I'm talking about the laypeople, just watching TV, Ukrainian officials were likely given much more details from US intelligence than just what Blinken said on CNN…)

Expecting to catch your opponent off-guard with a quick assault might work, but not if you give them a four-month notice beforehand…

I watched Putin's addresses. He is out of touch with reality. Turns out that Russian propaganda is quite light compared to hard stuff that Putin has been consuming. He is talking about genocide on Donbass. He is talking about "nazi" government. He, likely, thought that Ukrainian people will see his army as liberators(from democratically elected government, lol).

I think they've counted on the Ukrainian government (especially Zelensky and his closest circle) to give up the fighting and surrender early in the operation. Or have Ukrainian army overthrow him, Putin already suggested they don't need to take commands from this "narc" and "nazi" (btw Zelensky is jewish). It's either their intelligence is that bad (which I don't believe) or Putin just didn't listen, having some delusional picture of the current political and cultural state of Ukraine in his head.

Putin is just a Russian Trump, which is kind of ironic.

They're completely different. Both are evil, but Putin is extremely clever, which makes him a lot more dangerous than Trump. Trump can't do much more aside speaking to people bellies; surely he can amass lots of uneducated angry proud boys around him, but has zero credibility among the high ranks in the military.

Putin lives on a dream about making Russia great again by restoring the previous USSR borders. I'm not really sure he's as clever as you think.

They expected a lot more support from the local populace, it seems.

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