(following the thread and broader topic with great interest, but not much or maybe too much too say, and not enough time).
Does anyone think it likely that Ukraine will win a decisive ground victory over the Russian army? This thought has been in my head since the second day, when Russia seemed to be moving a little slowly, and the first videos of farmers pulling away Russian armored vehicles with tractors started to pop up. I thought "wow, the Russians launched an attack with 6 prongs, and with a force of 180,000 and half in reserve, some of the prongs must be pretty small. If NATO saturated the countryside with weapons, they could be cut off and soon annihilated." Since then the Russians seem to be doing, if anything, worse. If they were destined for success it seems like their momentum should be accelerating.
War is not just a numbers game. Like a stock market, it is also a mind game. If the Ukrainians destroy enough equipment and the Russians start to run out of supplies, a surrender could become contagious. Could we see a rapid collapse of nearly all Russian units deployed more than 50 miles from their border?
I don't think so. For several reasons:
1) The Russian troops on the ground are in the dark, and don't have independent access to news. There are a number of videos from Ukrainians, in which the Russian troops have no idea even what their destination is, or the Russian troops have been told that they'd be welcomed with open arms by the Ukrainians, or they'd been told they weren't going into combat. You'd better believe the boots on the ground have no idea about the 40-mile convoy, or the disastrous airborne assaults, or the videos of farmers towing abandoned equipment, or the massive destruction from artillery barrages.
2) Putin appears to be willing to dig in his heels. Criminalizing dissent, attempting to prop up the ruble via the central bank (we'll see how long that lasts), feeding troops into the wood chipper. It'll get worse in Russia before it gets better, and the same goes for Ukraine.
3) As much as farmers towing tanks is amusing, overall, Russians are gaining ground in the south. It's a slog, but they're progressing. The good news stories show the Ukrainians taking out a handful of vehicles here, a few hundred troops there, but in the big picture isn't as rosy.
4) There are some opinions that the Russians don't *have* to run a Blitzkrieg, and that the 40-mile traffic jam is just their way of doing things, until their artillery is in range of Kiev and they can start the bombardment, a la Aleppo. In other words, Russia is simply going scorched earth.
Now, Ukraine has seemed cautious so far, and hasn't made any large frontal attacks. Which I think is wise. With all the weapons flooding into the country, the Ukrainians have an awful lot of ability to strike back. The question then becomes: how to strike back most efficiently and effectively?