31 July 2023

The War That Defied Expectations

Phillips O’Brien

The Russian military was fast. So fast, analysts said, that the Ukrainian military stood little chance of resisting it in a conventional war. Moscow, after all, had spent billions of dollars upgrading the armed forces’ weapons and systems, reorganizing their structure, and developing new attack plans. The Russian military had then proved its worth by winning battles in small states, including during its invasion of Georgia and its air campaign in Syria. Experts believed that if Ukraine was attacked by Russia, Russia would quickly overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses and launch a sweeping ground campaign that would rapidly envelop Kyiv.

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