How come? A brief report and opinion from Italian journalist Vittorio Rangeloni and Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's Telegram post.
Interesting comments by the Italian. I'm reminded by other sources that the embargo on Russian energy is weakening. If Russian ISR did have the concentration of forces under observation as alluded to by several, why was such a deep thrust so successful? Was Putin really irate as some presume, or is it just a baseless presumption?
Have we seen Putin irate on publicly available photos/videos? If not, it is probably just the imagination of some people.
Regarding your first question, my idea is that the Russians knew very well in advance about the concentration of AFU on the border of Kursk, if even a observers and commentators noted the build-up of AFU in the Ukrainian Sumy region as recently as a week ago, as reported by Simplicius The Thinker in his latest article: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-8624-shaky-start-of-zelenskys
In my humble opinion, Russia just let Ukrainians troops get in, even so deep, to let them think that they were quite successful, so that they would call in even more troops, which then could be trapped in a cauldron and finally pounded heavily to death.
After all, let's not forget it, the SMO is not much about the conquest of Ukraine, but rather the de-militarization and de-nazification of Ukraine. Let's not forget Sun Tzu's rules too:
1) Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,
2) Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.
Interesting comments by the Italian. I'm reminded by other sources that the embargo on Russian energy is weakening. If Russian ISR did have the concentration of forces under observation as alluded to by several, why was such a deep thrust so successful? Was Putin really irate as some presume, or is it just a baseless presumption?
Have we seen Putin irate on publicly available photos/videos? If not, it is probably just the imagination of some people.
Regarding your first question, my idea is that the Russians knew very well in advance about the concentration of AFU on the border of Kursk, if even a observers and commentators noted the build-up of AFU in the Ukrainian Sumy region as recently as a week ago, as reported by Simplicius The Thinker in his latest article: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-8624-shaky-start-of-zelenskys
In my humble opinion, Russia just let Ukrainians troops get in, even so deep, to let them think that they were quite successful, so that they would call in even more troops, which then could be trapped in a cauldron and finally pounded heavily to death.
After all, let's not forget it, the SMO is not much about the conquest of Ukraine, but rather the de-militarization and de-nazification of Ukraine. Let's not forget Sun Tzu's rules too:
1) Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,
2) Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.
My comment at Simplicius was they were lured into a Fire Bag. It's not at all like the Russian incursion North of Kharkov.
i suspect we will know soon enough..
We will see what happens. Things are getting very interesting.