"It is said that Russia entered the war with the supposed second best army in the world and now has the second best army in Ukraine."

- Firstly, you got this part wrong.
Even though it is a war, your terminology is wrong, don't think 'war', think 'special military operation'.
This is important because you need to understand that the special military operation was constrained by its own terms.

"I think Foxy is very right that Putin's initial aims looked beyond the Donbass and even beyond Ukraine." No.

He didn't even take in enough troops to adequately take Kiev, let alone western Ukraine.

I think the Russian withdrawl from Kiev was an act of goodwill on the Russian side, as they thought a peace deal was going to be reached, but Zelensky renegged at the last minute at the request of the US and UK and decided to continue the war.

The tactical withdrawal from Kherson (all things given) was a good move despite the optics of defeat, Russian and allied forces were in a bad situation there, tying up many troops and at the whim of Ukraine destroying the Kharkovka dam and flooding the entire area.
By moving back to the other side of the river, they protected themselves from potential defeat here and lead the AFU into a trap where they themselves now face a difficult situation and heavy losses in Kherson.

I think the Russians thought that there was no point risking defeat or taking heavy losses themselves when in a month or 2 when they'd have 370k extra troops on hand to take it back.

Russia has moved to fighting a long war, a battle of attrition.
Russians aren't specifically trying to take land, as much as they are firstly trying to inflict heavy losses on Ukrainian troops.

Withdrawing from Izyum was a mistake as it has now left Belgorod exposed to attack with Ukrainian forces potentially able to enter the Russian homeland.

This discussion is a great example of the standards
that we should be seeking in our discussions on this
forum. We may not agree on some things - but keeping
things civil is important. And that has been the
case here.

I thank mhaze for raising
this important subject and continuing with it in a
civil manner.

Before I leave this discussion - I would just like to add
one final thought - which came from American lawyer -
David E. Springer:

"At all times, vigilance is the price of liberty.
We must remain vigilant because while it might be us today,
it will be some other group down the road decades from now.
The measure of our society over history is our fidelity to
our principles. We must remind our government and our
people to remain faithful to those principles or otherwise
our society, like so many in the past, will be swept on the
ash heap of history."

Armchair wrote: "I never said that,..." [that the Jews had it coming]

Well you kinda did. I wrote about 10s of 1000s of people murdered by the Russians and that they were Jewish. You took that as an entre into 4 anti-Jewish tirades.

But the funniest (or saddest) boast of AC was this..."You referred to them as 'Russians' instead of 'Soviets' in your first few opening paragraphs which is relevant considering they're no longer the same thing".

Somehow in the fevered mind that is AC's Russian sycophancy, the actions during the Soviet era weren't the actions of the Russians. Somehow the revolution had erased the Russians and replaced them with the hitherto unknown race called 'Soviets' and presumably the events of 1991 erased this new 'Soviet' race and replaced them with Russians.

What a berk.

"Even though it is a war, your terminology is wrong, don't think 'war', think 'special military operation'."

Translation: even though its a war don't call it that because uncle Vlad doesn't like it.

You're nitpicking, is that all you've got?

Don't whinge about Jewish graves in the former Soviet Union when Jews themselves helped to initiate the creation of the Soviet Union.
- Or at the very least, don't whinge about it without telling the full story.
Do you think Russian people did not also suffer during the Soviet era?
I think they paid a huge price for this Jewish-Socialist experiment.

"anti-Jewish tirades"
- That's what the truth is often referred to as by the pro-zionist brigade.
It's perfectly fine to be anti-Russian, anti-Qatari, anti-Indigenous, anti-Chinese, anti-Iranian, anti-Venezuelan, anti-Trump or anti-anything-else though, stupid hypocrites.

Perfectly fine for Israeli's to chant 'Death to Arabs' on live TV, but heaven forbid anyone dare criticise or tell the truth about Israel.

No One Will Talk To Israeli Reporters At World Cup Over Palestine
http://youtu.be/wkZDtJQ7xBc

"The regimes might change and with it the rhetoric. But peoples hang on to their essential being. Putin is just a Tsar by another name. Stalin also. Lenin especially so. The essence of the people who perpetrated the Holodomor, the Moldovan massacres and things like the Katyn massacre and the rape of Berlin is unchanged. Firing rockets into residential areas just to terrorise the population is very much the Russian way of war (and peace) and helps explain why the peoples of eastern Europe are determined to resist Putin with all they have."

Looks like the Israeli's are hanging onto their essential being too.
- Hate towards others.

Looks like some people are determined to resist Israel with all they have too.

Pretty much every bit of criticism you have laid against others in support of Israel, can be equally leveled back at Israel in support of others, and you fail to see how stupid you look trying.

The rest of what you say is just ignorant crap, hardly worth my time picking to pieces, which you know I'm quite capable of doing.

Russia will target military assets if placed in residential areas.
That's a crime by the Ukrainian government against it's own people under international law.
And Russia is firing missiles at military targets, which include electrical infrastructure.
If Ukraine tries to shoot those missiles down, and they end up hitting a residential area, then that is not the same as Russia deliberately targeting civilians.
But hey, we can't let truth get in the way of a good narrative can we...

I don't see you mentioning Ukrainians committing summary executions not only of people they deem to be Russian collaborators, but also of foreign fighters on their own side who quietly joined the war to support them.
They don't want the wounded foreign fighters identified as it will embarass the countries they came from so they get a bullet in the back of the head and their fingers cut off.
Ukraine cares so little about it's own fighters it won't collect the dead, and instead leaves the corpses in the streets and paddocks to rot.

- From what I hear, they do this so they don't have to officially recognise military losses, and also because they are fudging the numbers so their commanders can keep getting paid their troops wages whilst also asking the West for evermore dollars to sustain the military.