Amanpour and Company | Elliot Ackerman: Ukraine Has a Three-to-One Advantage | Season 2022 | PBS
This video interview of Ellioit Ackerman is very convincing when it comes to explaining the Ukrainian successes so far. It's quite long but give it a listen if you have the time.
Just watched it. Very good analysis by someone who's BTDT.
As has been discussed here before, it boils down to leadership failure and inflexibility on the Russians' side (going back to
Moltke's statement from 1871):
"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end..."
and on the Ukrainians' side, unshakable tenacity of moral purpose that is drawing film makers, IT professionals, teachers and every kind of non-combatant to arm themselves and train to defend their homeland.
The Ukrainins also have the advantage of a charismatically popular leader who, rather than passing down pronouncementts from some palatial room with a ridiculous 40' table, is (dangerously) on the front lines in a T-shirt, with no façade.
It also seems Zelenskyy has managed to replace what was a stagnant, corrupt administration with one that will hopefully be more enlightened. OTOH, the chances, as Ackerman mentioned, of this happening in Russia, are not good. The country is vast and varied, highly propagandized and Putin is generally popular. How much of the truth of what is happening in Ukraine will filter down to the general populace is hard to tell.
Our aboriginal peoples in N. America are known for the descriptive names they give people and places. If the war in Ukraine has a satisfactory conclusion, the Ukrainians will be colloquially known as "The People Over There With Big Brass Ones."
