>>513465057

The main issue was logistics. The US military, whatever other faults it may have, are masters of logistics. When the US invaded Iraq (twice), they made certain to maintain robust supply lines to ensure the forces at the tip of the spear didn't run out of food, fuel, or ammunition. This is exactly what Russia got wrong. When they launched the surprise offensive, their logistics were practically non-existent. That would have worked OK had the Ukrainian military melted away like they expected them to. But the moment the Russians met stiff resistance on the outskirts of Kiev or Kharkov, for example, their large military convoys quickly ran out of fuel. When the vehicles started running out of fuel it turned into a countdown timer to running out of food and water, so when those got low enough, the Russians abandoned thousands and thousands of vehicles and hiked back to Russia, Belarus, and back across their eastern lines in the Donbas. They lost a lot of equipment up front, Ukraine spent the next several weeks capturing or destroying what they could, NATO aide then started arriving, and lines solidified. Had Russia been able to maintain supply lines to even a minimum level, the war likely ended within weeks. But they didn't, and now the war is a meat grinder.