What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped
I guess everyone's weighing in with their view, so why not?Firstly, we should be mindful that the fog of war is now in play, and a good amount of what we think we know is unverifiable. With that caveat out of the way...It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. Counterexamples exist and could be explained by rogue units, incompetence, or hot-blooded revenge on local resistance.I speculate that Russian airforce weaponry is not generally high-precision, and the order to avoid targeting civilians implies restraint on use of indiscriminate bombing. Again, we've seen counterexamples which could be explained by all of the above reasons, plus the possibility of friendly fire from failed Ukrainian air defences.I can only imagine that the "pro-civilian" policy is part of a plan to eventually install a pro-Russia government that has some semblance of consent from the people.But I cannot fathom how they expect that suzerainty to operate in the face of mass popular resistance.Did they really launch this invasion on the assumption that the people of Ukraine would just roll over and accept foreign rule?Their options seem to be (a) beat a hasty retreat; (b) impose a bloody total subjugation of the population; (c) face a decades-long insurgency that will bleed them dry.We need to find a variant of (a) that allows Putin to save face, because his default will be (b).