I was one of the people that did not believe that Russia was actually going to start this war. My blog posts on the subject are here: So Is Russia going to actually attack Ukraine? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org) and here: The Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 – part 1 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)
There were three reasons for this:
1. Force Ratios: They did not have a particularly favorable force ratio.
2. Weather: This was not a good time of the year to start an offensive
3. Warning: They had given Ukraine plenty of warning that they were coming.
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All three of these points have turned out to be true in spades.
1. Force Ratios: This appears to now be a war of 200,000+ plus on each side, with no one having a numerical advantage. Not particularly surprising, this war has now stagnated. It happens when both sides are roughly equal in strength.
2. Weather: The Russians forces were afflicted by frost bite, tended to be road bound, and now the war has stalled, and the weather is not helping.
3. Warning: The Ukrainians were well prepared for the Russian attacks and halted most of them.
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So, I do think the three reasons I gave for why conducting on attack in late February was a bad idea has indeed been proven valid. That they did so anyway indicates to me a major error on the part of Russia and/or Vladimir Putin.
Now, history is full of examples of leaders doing the wrong thing. There is no shortage of examples of leaders initiating wars that were really bad ideas. I could list them, but no need to, it is a very long list of stupid ideas.
It is hard to account for incompetence. If it looks like this is a bad idea as I am sitting here at my desk, then I tend to assume that the people leading, with their supporting advisors and staff, also see that this is bad idea. Yet history has no shortage of leaders initiating disastrous wars, so obviously one must always be ready this. This is hard to objectively account for. Still, it was clear that initiating this war, when and how they did, was a mistake.
