So I was one of those US military guys who got deployed to Europe in the run up to the invasion for… deterrence? Presence operations? Idk, whatever buzzword they decided that week. In reality we just flew to Europe and hung out for a couple months and collected per diem.

Anyway, I was an intelligence analyst. My job was to go through all the reports the intelligence community published in the previous 24 hours and brief updates to the commander.

I will say that the narrative that Russian commanders were a bunch of r-slurs who didn’t bring enough supplies and made idiotic tactical decisions that got their men killed unnecessarily is pretty spot on. The Ukrainians are exceptionally skilled at employing the anti-tank weapons NATO and other partners are giving them and are hurting the Russians pretty badly. They almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to stop the Russian advance without them.

Additionally, the Ukrainians are taking significantly more casualties than reported. Also they tend to inflate their kill numbers a lot higher than what’s reality. Then the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense says “We attacked an airport and destroyed 30 Russian aircraft”, it usually means they only actually destroyed like 6. Ghost of Kyiv was pretty obvious propaganda since we can pretty easily track what aircraft has been shot down. I don’t know if it was ever confirmed , but think most of the Russian aircraft that were shot down were shot down by friendly fire