Please explain to me: Putin wants to annex Ukraine. WHY does he destroy the country he wants to own? He needs to rebuild everything afterwards.

My guess

At this point he probably figured out he’s not taking all of Ukraine. So he’s he gonna fuck it up as much as possible. Cause if he can’t have it no one can type of thinking

There must have been a children's hospital of strategic importance that needed bombing, or perhaps a tactically critical old folks home.

Infrastructure can be rebuilt. If you destroy all the power and water utilities, you make the place uninhabitable thus all the Ukrainians leave. When the war is over, presuming you've won, then the land is vacant and you can move your people in without issue. You don't have to deal with property rights, or civil issues, or partisans, just rebuild and that's it.

Rebuilding after a war can be just as lucrative as the war machine itself. Those contracts and infrastructure deals are worth it. Plus those people receiving those contracts ARE the oligarchs that are part of Putlers regime in the first place. It's win win for him.

The people who suffer, are just inconsequential cannon fodder for him.

He wants the land and doesn't care about the people. If he can get the people to leave the land, it will be easier to get the land. If he destroys homes and critical infrastructure, more people will be forced to leave.

A blackout of the Presidents Office... man that's crazy.

This is the Russian way of war. They turn a city to rubble with air power and mostly artillery and then when the city is abandoned they send in their infantry. These barbarians don't know how to create. They only know how to destroy. They are jealous of the advancements made by western leaning ex Soviet satellites and so they are determined to "fix" this problem in the only way they know how.

this is saying that the President's office stated that there was a blackout in the Chernihiv Oblast border town.

> Putin wants to annex Ukraine

Nope. Putin wants to eliminate Ukraine. In his viewpoint, Ukraine does not exist, should not exist, has no reason to exist.

• If he flattens it completely, that's consistent with eliminating Ukraine.
• When he replaces the UAH with the RUB , that's a step toward eliminating Ukraine.
• When he replaces Ukrainian passports with Russian passports, that's a step toward eliminating Ukraine.
• When he replaces Ukrainian with Russian language instruction, that's a step toward eliminating Ukraine.
• When he purges references to Ukraine from Russian history books, that's a step toward eliminating Ukraine.
• When he sends children elsewhere to become Russian, that's a step toward eliminating Ukraine.
• The capture of land and resources is NOT his primary goal. Making them Russian, NOT Ukrainian is his higher priority. All steps toward eliminating Ukraine.

He has previously stated that although his timeframe is 25 years -- a generation -- at the end there will be NO Ukraine, NOTHING Ukrainian, and no memory of anything Ukrainian. Ukraine will be eliminated, erased, nonexistant.

Correct, then if they're pushed out they can claim the 'special operation' was intended to so severely damage a regional 'enemy' that they would be unable to threaten Russia which graciously pulled out its troops following the """successful"""" conclusion of military operations.

He doesn’t want Ukraine to exist. If he can’t annex it, his next goal is to destroy it.

This is also very much what they do. Part of assimilating a culture is making sure there’s no culture left. As said though, he knows he’s losing and at this point Russia is lobbing whatever they can as tantrums.

Ah, KBR and our days in Iraq. Cheney and his asshole friends made so much money from another bullshit war.

They have to capitulate to control. Can’t annex otherwise. They know they could rebuild afterwards.

For some reason, reading this reminded me of the Harkonnens in the old DOS dune game (the top down rts one).

Playing against those buggers and you always had a fuck off great big missile come your way.

Also odd how i associate Putin's actions with the harkonnen attitude.

(And yeah, I can't remember if i have spelled harkonnen correctly but i cant be arsed to find out)

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