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Notes -
Not sure what do you mean here. Russian airforce did quite a lot of strikes. But hitting "the government leaders" isn't as easy as you think - first, you have to know where they are. Second, you need to get there - and these places would be ones of the best protected. Third, you need to actually strike the target - which Russians were consistently dismally bad at, unless the target it "any random residential building in the two-mile radius". Fourth, your strike has to have some effects - and if you saw the actual buildings we're talking about (I did), they are pretty sturdy. Not accounting to what defenses were built in in the soviet times (that I don't know but I am sure there's at least the basement there).
The goal of Russians never was to convince you, so they may have omitted a couple of steps to make it believable to you. They didn't try to carpet bomb Kiev for the chance to hit Zelensky because a) Ukrainians have anti-aircraft missiles and fighters too (which btw Russians declared destroyed but very very soon found out they aren't) and b) they would spend a lot of effort to bomb one place and Zelensky would be in another place. If they had a way to know where Zelensky is at any given moment, they could kill him a hundred of times, because he has been visiting places within direct artillery or missile strike from Russian forces many times. They just didn't know where he is. You, of course, are free to believe whatever makes you feel better.
Yes, of course they wanted the landbridge to Crimea. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't capture it, obviously. But that was one part of the plan. The other was the decapitation. Somehow in your mind, the capturing of the land bridge to Crimea contradicts the decapitation plan, but however I try, I just can't see how.
Speaking of the bridge, btw, the south was where the collapse in parts did happen - that's where the strategy of recruiting local traitors worked the best, and that explains how Russia captured so much territory with almost zero resistance. They expected the same to happen everywhere, but it didn't. So they had to scramble for the plan B - which means mass mobilization, for which their army absolutely wasn't ready (one more proof they didn't expect needing it) - in fact, some in the military now saying if they do another mobilization like that, the army would not survive, because the chaos and disorganization it caused was horrible (for them, of course, for Ukrainians it was what allowed them to stop the Russia's advance).
It was an expected occurrence, though not the conclusion of the war, just the decisive phase of it - the composition and arrangement of the forces all point to it, so does contemporary propaganda, which nowhere nearly mentioned the possibility of year-long exhausting campaign requiring sending entire Russian prison population to serve as soil fertilizer. Everybody - including top generals and the Khuylo himself - expected quick collapse of the governmental structure. They certainly expect the war not end at it, but they expected the war to be won. It could take a lot of time from the decisive moment to the full victory - in WW2, it took several years - but the break had to occur quickly. It didn't, so now they need to conduct the campaign which they didn't expect to have to conduct.
Was there even one attempt at targeting government leaders? Your claim is that Russia had an extensive network of people ready to take over who chicken out, but they couldn't feed adequate enough intel for Russians to engage in a specific strike against government leaders in a "decapitation strike"? Instead, you want to claim the VDV + <30,000 soldiers were them doing this. Or was it the mysterious cowardly agents who were going to rise up but didn't? This isn't a strong argument.
What isn't believable is your argument given what actually happened in the opening stages of the war for the reasons I specified in my comment. It is difficult and yet they didn't try to do it at all. Or are you claiming they did try, but it's hard and they didn't succeed a single time? I haven't seen anything to support that. When I read a breakdown of the things destroyed in the opening stage of the war, none of it was government buildings.
Please read my comments carefully. My argument is the claim Russia thought government collapse was a foregone conclusion because Putin "seemingly had no contingency," is poor because the large force moving to take the land bridge is evidence there was a contingency if the Kiev push didn't arrive to a collapsed government. The contradiction is in the claim I originally responded to in a discussion you injected yourself into.
if memory serves, this was at the end of September (6 months post invasion)
What I saw in the opening month makes me think it was a hope, but would serve as a pinning force for Russians to get into position inside Ukraine if this didn't come to pass, which it did.
Not a successful one. Obviously, I can't know about unsuccessful ones. There were attempts to send attack groups to capture/kill the leaders, but those were stopped way before they could reach their goals. That was the part of the decapitation attempt, yes.
Yes, they had a lot of people who kinda liked Russia, even more people that were willing to take money from Russia, but way less, and not enough people to actually do something for Russia, and not high enough to be able to feed that high level of classified info. I'm not sure why it surprises you. If Putin wanted to capture the US and offered some US people tons of money, probably there would enough people who would take the money. There are people supporting Putin in the US right now. None of them would be able to tell Putin the exact location and schedule of the US president. For that, you need completely different level of access. Russia has some scores there - as I said, they gained a lot on the south basically for free, and has - and still have, on the occupied territories - people glad to work for them. But way not enough to achieve their goals.
Part of it, yes. The VDV's mission was primarily to capture the airports to allow reinforcements to land closer to Kiev, which is the standard Russian strategy, and at which they failed. It is also the standard strategy - not only for Russia - to first capture vital points with small and rapid force and then keep it until the bulk of the force arrives, while denying the enemy coordination and ability to mount any defense. That's why their attack looks kinda spiky if you look at the map - the direction is at major centers, like Kiev, Kharkiv, Kherson, Maruipol, Odessa. At those, they had success at Kherson, and after much struggle, Mariupol which by then was undefendable. All others failed.
And the planned size of Russian force was never <30K. It was 150-170K. Of course, only part of it was dedicated to Kiev specifically.
No, it started much earlier. As always, in Russia the official state of affairs and the real state of affairs is much different. At first, as you described, they thought it could be done with small forces and the rest mopped up at leisure. Then they had to involve other army units (remember, they had more than a million at hand, even though obviously they couldn't use them all at once) - initially they publicly promised no enlisted personnel at all will be fighting in Ukraine, only volunteers on contract, since this was not a war, but "special operation". In fact, you could be jailed (maybe still could) just for calling it a war. Then they started "volunteering" other military units. In April, the first summons to reservists started to appear. Those were weakly enforced t first, but for those silly enough to show up, they were pressured to sign "voluntary contracts" with the promise (false of course) that they will be only used as supply units in the rear and never see the frontline. Some were stupid enough to buy it. On May 28 Putin signed an order removing age limits for such recruitment. In June, they started enlisting prisoners. In Donetsk and Luhansk, the mobilization started in February, and by June became compulsory, with frequent manhunts, for any able-bodied man (they surely felt very protected by Putin by then). Most of the mobilized were dead or disabled soon after arriving at the frontlines, because nobody bothered to adequately train or supply them. And only after exhausting all these options, in September indeed, Duma officially passed the law serving as the base for the official mobilization.
Overall, there was a clear expectation at each step that they have enough resources and wouldn't need more, only to need more within the next month or two. Initially, they denied the mobilization would be needed - but with time, they realized this is the only thing that would save them from immediate collapse. Yes, it took time - given severe resource constraints and the vast sizes of the arena (over 1000km battle line). During that time, Russia was persisting in denial that they are at war and that they will need more resources. But gradually they had to recognize it. This does not match the idea that they expected the long at hard campaign from the start - they absolutely did not. They expected a quick win. Then maybe a not-so-quick win. Then maybe a moderately long win. Then maybe a slow win. Then "at least something we could declare a win without losing face". Now they expect maybe at least not lose what they had in 2021. It will get worse for them.
Where, based on what, targeting who and this is proved by what? I have never seen any supporting evidence of anything remotely like this. I have seen lots of evidence of the opposite, i.e., Russians knowing about where government leaders were and not attacking them.
They sent waves of missiles which destroyed important military targets all over the country from Karkov to Lvov. There are countless examples of this. And yet not a single civilian leadership building was destroyed? Your entire claim rests on soldiers attempting, but failing, at targeting government leaders, but I haven't seen good evidence of this.
"Government leaders" != only the President, the most guarded and secretive government leader of any country
Lots of those people could indeed say where mayors were, where deputies were, where representatives were, etc. Difficult? Yes, for some. Impossible for all? No.
I have always been speaking specifically about the Kiev push.
My understanding is that summonses to reservists are a normal part of the operation of the Russian military, absent if a war is going on or not. Is this accurate? Russia's hybrid military system is very foreign to me. In the US, reservists are regularly called up for all sorts of functions and are regularly deployed anyway as normal operation of the military irrelevant of wars or whatever else.
So they received summonses, but then they weren't enforced, and if they did show up then they would sign voluntary contracts despite them being reservists and receiving summonses anyway? What happened if they showed up and didn't sign "voluntary" contracts? Do you have any idea how many people this happened to?
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/03/01/ukraine-kharkiv-government-building-explosion-marquardt-ovn-intl-hnk-vpx.cnn
"Large explosion takes out government building in central Kharkiv"
And for question "why official residence of president was not bombed" - I am pretty sure that Zelensky is not staying there.
I remember this in Kharkov; there were photos of the military staging out of this building.
The problem with your and jar's accusations is they're not supported and do not make sense based on what we observed; If Russia wanted to destroy Ukraine and decapitate the government, the invasion and war would have looked nothing like it did. Not one civilian gov building, but attacks on civilian government leadership across the state which in no way, shape, or form happened, and hasn't to this day. And it's not because they don't know. As we've seen in response to using random truck drivers as suicide bombers to damage the Crimean bridge, Russia bombed the GRU building in Kiev killing dozens in GRU admin. This is the exception, not the rule.
I have no interest in random google spams though nor silliness like this, so good luck.
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