178 Days of the War That Was "Won in the First 3 Days"
Nearly 6 months into the Russian-Ukrainian war Ukraine still holds a part of Donbass. More than that, Ukraine still holds a part of the old 2014-2022 contact line. Including in the immediate vicinity of Donetsk city.
Not only has Russia not yet completed the capture of Donbass, in some places it has yet to advance a single yard.
Who could have predicted this?
On February 24 when the war kicked off where did you think that Russia would be 6 months later?
Did you think it would still be struggling just to take Donbass?
Yet 178 days later here we are.
Does this look like a war that was “won in the first 3 days” to you? (A constant refrain of the lemmings in February and March was “stop criticizing, this is a war that was won in the first 3 days.”)
Moreover, with each passing month the pace of advance has been slowing down further to where it is now best described as ‘glacial’.
At this pace how long is it going to take for Russia to achieve its two other stated goals of the invasion (besides Donbass) — the “denazification” and the “demilitarization” of Ukraine.
Would 6 centuries do the trick?
“The war is really over for the Ukrainians. They have been ground into bits, there is no question about that…” — Douglas Macgregor to Tucker Carlson, March 8, 2022.
Not sure why the two statements (that the war was won in the first 4 days, and that Russian progress is slow or nonexistent) are in conflict. The first statement is justified by Russia's destruction of Ukraine's air power, the heist on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and its Plutonium stash, and the power projected by its hypersonic missiles. You can defeat a country's military without occupying its territory.