They may have expected support from citizens in Eastern Ukraine where there has been a war going on for years, but I have yet to hear concrete evidence that this was expected throughout Ukraine.

Also, captured soldiers will say anything under duress, and I have yet to see a verifiable survey of captured soldiers. Relying on The words of a few soldiers is nonsense.

It’s very much a fact, though.

Before the war started, my girlfriend (Ukrainian) said she figured that if Russian soldiers came, Ukraine would just let them in in peace. She didn’t expect Russia to go ahead with an invasion in the first place, and didn’t realise war was what would be involved. Her attitude obviously very quickly changed when she saw her country was fighting back, morale is an important component of this.

It was always delusional to think west Ukraine would welcome Russia, but east Ukraine had been consuming a LOT of Russian propaganda up to the war. And when we talk about eastern Ukraine we aren’t talking about the bordering cities currently suffering heavy occupation, we are talking about the entire eastern half.

If Ukrainians themselves were thinking it, there is no question soldiers were as well. You may have seen comms of dead Russian soldiers in the early days of the war talking about this, including a sms conversation that got famous when being read out at the EU parliament.

If you are determined to not believe all the report, why asking? This point came up from all sides - from soldiers, from putin, from spies inside Russia, from political observers of Russia. It is literally one of complaints against FSB - they claimed support for Russia in Ukraine is high and that they build up collaborators.

But, if you are determined to not believe, because I dont know why ...

It’s simply a “point” brought up by a few people with little concrete evidence to prove it. I find this type of journalism to be closer to a gossip column (driven by intelligence agencies and the people that want to believe it is true) rather than a true news story with appropriate facts. The reporting on the Ukraine conflict is borderline pathetic and mostly driven by people that have no idea what is truly happening. Who’s propaganda do you want to believe?

If you discount what soldiers say, what Putin says, what Russian propaganda says and so on as no evidence, then sure.

I think it's more likely that Putin lied about this, and the soldiers were told the same lies. Russia trusted that collaborators / saboteurs in Ukraine would allow them to crush the remaining resistance very quickly. This is allegedly how Cherson fell so swiftly: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/29/2088926/-Ukraine-up...

And recently Arestovych said that the first days of the invasion a lot of saboteurs and assassination squads were in Kiev trying to topple the government.

Of course you can't believe everything the Ukrainians say either, I just think it's pure propaganda from Putin when he said the Ukrainians would welcome Russia as liverators.

that's very hard to believe after what happened in 2014 in Crimea.

what do you mean hard to believe? it worked in the Donbas region, Harkiv is majority Russian speaking... from Putin's office looking at a map it was the same situation, and hyping up the Nazi, ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian threat also seemed like a trivial thing, after all it seems to work in Moscow.

it was a cognitive bias, thinking too much about how and why it could/should work instead of looking at why it couldn't (eg. because the strong selection effect of the repressed political activities of Moscow versus Ukraine, plus the strong rose tinted glasses he and many Russians have that color everything positive that seems like the old Russian Empire, whereas Slavic people a thousands of kilometers away have a rather different view of how great that is and was.)

It didn't work in Donbas in 2014 either. Neither it did in Odesa and other cities during Maidan. The level of domestic support was unexpectedly low (for them), that's why they had to rely on local criminal gangs and resort to recruiting the far-right activists from Russia by May 2014 (such as "neo-Cossacks" or former RNU members), then the military vets by June. The native separatist movement in Donetsk that existed there in small numbers has been pushed aside.

I mean it "worked" in the sense that Putin got the bare minimal of support so there was at least a few separatist figureheads. :/

> it worked in the Donbas region, Harkiv is majority Russian speaking

I'm pretty sure Russians understand that not all of Ukraine is pro-Russian.

Russians are a lot of people. some wholeheartedly believe that the current war is started against the Nazis who hold Kiev and hunt the Russian population.

and Putin likely counted on at least some support from some parts of the population in Ukraine. as evidenced by their plan of quick victory, and that the Ukrainian government will collapse, and it will be easy to install a puppet government. just as Janukovic was relatively popular some years ago