Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
I don't know, I think Ukraine would do well to limit the amount of attention those militias that are handling the border incursions are getting, as they're filled with some pretty unsavory characters. This is mostly about the Russian Volunteer Corps (which is apparently much more extreme than the Free Russia Legion), but it's not exactly endearing:
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I'm not sure how much Ukraine can do about that.
Russians openly fighting against Putin inside Russia is by far the most interesting development of the war since the liberation of Kherson over six months ago, so it's going to get a lot of coverage, and the propaganda and military significance are both potentially huge.
Putin has also played the "everyone who is against us is a nazi" card so often by now, that I'm not sure how much it matters at this point if he sometimes happens to be right. There's also just so little sympathy for Russians outside Russia, that I think most people when/if they hear that are going to go either "whatever" or "that serves them right".
In any case, it's pretty obviously not a coincidence this is happening now, when Ukraine is trying to find possible break points in the Russian lines for their counteroffensive. The intent is to try to force Russians to move some of their troops away from Ukraine to protect their rear end, so to speak, and from that angle this is pretty smart. Putin needs to look like he can respond quickly and with strength or he risks looking weak (potentially lethal), but trying to block the whole border from small attacks like this could suck up a lot of men needed elsewhere, plus his military already has logistic issues, and maybe you don't want to use the worst troops, because 1. being poorly trained they might easily embarrass themselves in combat against a likely very motivated guerrilla-type force (with possible NATO training) 2. maybe Putin doesn't trust all his troops enough to let them near Russian insurgents.
In any case, the optics of this are just terrible for Putin, even if the military scale is tiny.