Larry Wrote An Excellent...

 ... intro-retrospective on the events leading to SMO. 

The US decided to go forward with its anti-Russian campaign, with sanctions and the demonization of all things Russian.  An outside observer could relate it to the famous US attempt to change the name of “French fries” to “Freedom fries” when France refused to endorse one of the US military invasions. In any event, the US actions made it easier for Putin to begin a more general mobilization for the war effort, call up reservists, and to rapidly build up weapons output.  There were calls again from Russian supporters to speed up the war and for Russia to go on the offensive in the hope that Ukraine could be knocked out of action quickly, thus saving lots of lives and infrastructure.  The hope of this group was that it would show the West that the effort against Russia was not going to succeed and negotiations toward a new security architecture could proceed.  The opposing view was that a big offensive by Russia would enable the Western propaganda to scare the Europeans and create greater unity in NATO.  This view claims that cracks in NATO are getting wider all the time and that the EU is more and more dysfunctional—so why interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake?

Read the whole thing at Larry's blog. 

In related news, Russian Navy continues its "weak performance" in accordance to some US "analysts" and today blew up VSU military academy barracks in Lvov. There have been 800 VSU and NATO personnel housed there. Not anymore. 

Yet another evidence of Russia "running out of missiles".