Arneb wrote:It was the one AN 225 in existence, and it was a Ukranian plane.
They've been building a second one for as long as anyone can remember.
Russian army does not seem to be performing well here. They still haven't accomplished their day one objectives. I saw someone who commented, when you've been planning an invasion for a year, and your forces run out of food and fuel on the second day . . .
Here is something about the size of the forces needed to occupy Ukraine.
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/worl ... ng-AnalystFor comparison, it is noted that the occupying forces in Germany in 1945 had 89.3 troops per one thousand inhabitants. For Bosnia in 1995, it was 17.5 per thousand, for Kosovo in 2000, it was 19.3 per thousand, and in East Timor, it was 9.8 per thousand.
At 3.4 Russian soldiers per thousand Ukrainians, their force is rather on the low side, although the Americans tried to occupy Afghanistan with even fewer per thousand. That didn't work very well.
And the invading army's performance seems at times comically inept. We have video of tanks running out of fuel, Russian soldiers not knowing where they are, where they are going, etc.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vx43/ ... erformancePrevious operations in Ukraine, and also in Syria, were conducted largely by special forces; this one is mainly general conscripts.
What happens to this long convoy approaching Kyiv will be rather telling. I have seen conflicting opinions on this - some say the fact that it hasn't been stopped is a really bad sign for Ukraine, whereas others recall what happened in Grozny during the first war with such a convoy.