Do you think Russia hasn't been able to win the war yet because they were holding back on the basis of "humanitarian concerns"?

Ad_Quid_Orator
I've heard a lot of people claim that Russia hasn't been able to defeat Ukraine yet because they've been "holding back for humanitarian reasons" in that they wanted to minimize civilian casualties and they didn't want to "bomb the hell out of a country like the US".

Well, lets look at the numbers, according to the Iraq body count, 7269 civilians died during the invasion of Iraq (not the subsequent Guerilla war). Meanwhile, 4,031 civilians died in Ukraine. However, there's a big difference, the entire population of Iraq (26 M) was under occupation by the end of the war while the occupied part of Ukraine has around 5 million people so if the Russian army was being as "brutal" as the US in Iraq, you'd expect the civilian death-toll in Ukraine to be around 1,440 but it's way higher. Not to mention that's only the number of confirmed civilian deaths so far.

The narrative put forward by Putin apologists is ass backwards; the reason the death toll is lower than what it was in the Iraq war is because the Russians have been kept away from most of the major cities. This is also why the claim that supplying weapons to Ukraine will prolong the war is BS; it might discourage Ukrainians from fighting but it will also encourage the Russians to fight harder and when their major cities are threatened, the Ukrainians will fight harder because more will be at stake for them. You know, we're so used to guerilla wars against an occupation where the insurgents take a 10:1 loss ratio against the occupiers but because they're fighting for their homes they have more willpower than the invaders so the occupiers decide it's not worth it. In Ukraine, they're like fuck that shit, we won't leave ourselves at the mercy of an occupying force. There's letting imperialism die in the hearts of the invaders but the Ukrainians killed it on the battlefield so no the Russians have to settle for a few provinces that they shelled into ruin.
Do you think Russia hasn't been able to win the war yet because they were holding back on the basis of "humanitarian concerns"?
17 Opinion