yarmaluk

I think it is because Putin its assuming that everyone is operating in the same world view that he has. Countries "applied to join" the Warsaw Pact because Russia had a strategic military use for them, combined with an ability to force them. I suspect he genuinely believes that e.g. the baltic states had pro-western governments put in and then instructed to ask to join NATO so that NATO could expand. In this world view the governments of 'minor'  countries are chosen by the covert decisions of the 'major' ones, and the idea of being responsive to the wants and needs of the population doesn't come up. 
In this world view, since the givens government of Ukraine wasn't chosen by Russia, then of course it was imposed and forcefully maintained by the west.  And the west have no legitimate military strategic interests in Ukraine unless their goal is to be able to threaten Russia.
The Western view of course is that countries get to choose their own governments,  and that countries can freely decide to join a security alliance (if they meet the entry conditions), and that this is a good thing because ultimately mutual defence reduces the chance of wars and leads to rising prosperity for all. 
As an aside,  Putin also has the "American disease" of assuming everything is about Russia, in the same way that Americans think that everything is about America ("why did Russia invade now? Let's look at what has changed in the USA recently to see what has caused this..." Ukraine might will view NATO membership as directly related to Russia, for obvious and entirely valid reasons,  but for the west,  Ukraine joining NATO isn't really about Russia. I'ts about extending the "peace bubble" to protect the lives and enhance the wellbeing of everyone inside it. 
But that's not something Putin would do,  so it's not something that he believes anyone else does either. 

So I gotta start by asking: are you honestly engaging in a discussion here and want to explore ideas?  Because you are coming across as a guy whose mind is made up and no amount of rational discussion is going to matter.  I am honestly going to try here, you get exactly one shot based on your tone so far:
1 - Absolutely true, plans definitely do not survive contact, as old as warfare.  However, what is important is how fast one can re-plan and pivot.  In this the Russians have not demonstrated an ability to come up with a "new plan" and re-org to it.  They have had a pregnant pause which has allowed their opponent to organize/mobilize, arm up, dig in, dominate the narrative, and access billions in military support.  And then there is the quality of that initial plan.  Failing to establish some key operational pre-conditions (e.g. why does the internet still work for Ukraine?) is also not a very good sign. So let's see the quality of the second (or third) plan and then we might now better what is going on.
2 - You said "The Russians have taken losses, but they remain free to operate combat aircraft and helicopters over most of the country." That is not true, in fact it is very not true below about 10k feet.  The fact that Russian forces did not set the basic pre-condition of gaining air superiority is a demonstration of their problem, not Ukraine's.  Plenty of evidence of Ukrainian UAV strikes online to demonstrate that we really are in more of an airpower stalemate and that is bad for an invading force.
3 - The Russian Navy is definitely still a factor.  They have sea control and are hitting with missiles but 1) like everything else the Russians are doing, there appears little integration between naval, air and land power at this point and 2) the Russian amphibious capability is in serious question. If for the sole question, "why have they not used it yet?  that said sea control will likely not be decisive, nor has it been decisive so far.
4- Evidence of defeat (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html), so that is coming up on 24 BTGs of tanks, look at the logistics vehicle, coming up on 485...that is bad.  But even if you refuse to believe this, then one has to ask "what losing looks like".  Over to you as you asked the question.  However, it is a layered issue.  Political defeat, military defeat, economic defeat - if we are talking military defeat, well then an inability to influence or shape negotiations in the direction of national interest is near the top for me.  And as we watch the bubble slide on the Russian side of the table, it is not looking good, but I will give you that the jury is still out. 
5- Well backwards, as on a map, is kind of a one dimensional view to be honest. The primary way Russia has "gone backwards" is in the will of the Ukrainian people.  This is not about terrain, it is about their willingness to fight.  I think if Russian had one a quick and fairly clean fight that will might have stayed relatively dormant; however, that "plan did not survive" and now the entire nation is galvanized in an existential fight...that is definitely "backwards" from a Russian perspective.  Economically, narrative and just about any other non-military metric you want to apply Russia has gone backwards severely and let's not even start on the diplomatic front as it has been a complete disaster.  But if you only want to measure ground, then I guess we have to see.
So we have discussed a lot on forces and comparisons.  Right now, conservative estimate is that UA and Russian manpower is pretty near parity in theatre.  Russia does have equipment advantage but it has failed to be able to really leverage that.  Why?  Well that is a million dollar question.  What we have seen is that Russian mass is not working, if it was that map would look a lot different.  I suspect it is either because the Russian war machine simply is not setup for this complexity and has fallen under its own weight, and the Ukrainians help them along with that.
You are correct on one point, this is coming down to Will.  The Russians can keep pouring men into this fight, even if they are dismounted and have no ammo or food but if they have the Will that is an option.  What you seem to be sidestepping is the other issue, the Ukrainian Will to fight.  They see this as existential and are acting as such, so that is a problem right there for the Russians, unless they want a decades old resistance blowing up in their face but frankly I can't even seeing them getting that far as that would mean the Russians actually have to control the entire country and not about 15% of it.  Until then arms and support will flow in from the west and Russians will bleed...but we will see who blinks first.
 Lemme just close with a very important point - this is not an internet argument that anyone can "win".  I know the reflex is there to play forum games and try to "out argue each other" but that is not what is happening here.  For the most part no one really has a full picture of that is going on so we are sharing information and trying to build the best picture we can.  So the usual internet argument games do not apply here.  If you have a different assessment based on information you have, present it and we can all get a better picture.  This is a real war and people are dying in droves, so I frankly do not care who is "right or wrong" on a given Thurs because the situation is too dynamic.  But if you honestly want to contribute then do so, but this is not a contest...it is a really violent and scary puzzle.  Finally, there are people posting here who are actually in range of all those guns so let's also try and keep that in mind.

Great news! The bomb shelter under Drama Theater in Mariupol survived the hit of 500 kg bomb. Now the rubbles removing have started to reach the entrance of shelter. There is still unknow about possible casualties among people which were inside the buiding and out of shelter. 

As McMasters said in a recent interview.  Stop falling into the Putin playbook of threats of escalation.  There are logical reasons for proceeding with things like AD units instead of aircraft, but this constant concern of Russian nukes is just Putin's bluster.  NATO needs to double down on supplying both the war effort and a commitment to help Ukraine rebuild while keeping Russia economically isolated.

Not sure I agree with this:
- First, the average citizen is not seeing what we are, a total shambles of a Russian military operation that will ring out across the ages.  They see that Russia attacked it neighbor, blew up a lot of buildings that look like where they live and killed a lot of people that look like them.  The public have short attention spans but once something gets stuck in the collective brain-pan it is very hard to get out.  We are already seeing shifts in public opinion and that drives politicians.
- Second, it is not in any NATO nations military interest.  We need a bad guy, a boogie man in order to create political will to arm us.  We are going to play up the Russians as dangerous and a proven threat that we need to really worry about.  Assessments will get slowly ratcheted up from the obvious sh*tshow we see today, towards "the Russians have learned and teamed up with the Chinese!"  It is no secret that larger deployments to Eastern Europe a la Cold War are on the table.
- Third, no matter how badly the Russians did here...and it is bad...collective non-military deterrence failed.  We threatened sanctions, mean looks and strong language, Russia said "screw it" and went anyway.  That means hard power is back on the table one way or the other.  We have entered into a season of Mars (something most of the MENA already knew) and that is going to change the calculus (already has).  We are already getting sweaty questions on the Arctic and NORAD.
- Fourth, crazy bastards still got the bomb.  No matter how ridiculous Russian performance has been, they are sitting on enough nuclear boom-boom to re-set civilization, so we are likely going to see BMD and its like go nuts.
The only thing that makes this all go away is a total regime change in Russia that puts a moderate centrist in power, all the while embracing open liberal democracy...like by Saturday.  I think the Russian have a better chance of a Ukrainian surrender than that happening, so here we are in crazy town.    

The effect of US intelligence revelations starting last summer should not be underestimated. They didn't just prepare the information battlefield for this war, they also created intense paranoia within the power vertical in the Kremlin. Putin was so worried about US intelligence penetration that he demanded all preparations be kept within a tight circle. That stunted the entire planning process.

I don't see how this is going to work. While it looks like you are right and many Russians do want to have a "strong man" at the top who somehow restores Russia to its former glory, how can you force them to change their mind? There is no historical evidence that punishing a people for their government ever worked (correct me if I missed something). There are a bunch of countries which had sanctions imposed on them for decades like Cuba, Iran, North Korea. Did they overthrow their government? No, on the contrary isolation help the respective regime to tighten its grip.
As a German I'd say let's look at what we can learn from history: As Steve pointed out, after WW1, Germany was isolated and severly punished. What good did it do? It only served to give the Germans a deep feeling of humiliation combined with growing resentment towards democracy. The latter because a) they actually stuck to the Versaille Treaty and paid the reparations and b) since democracy really has to be learned, the democratic parties grew quite detached from the people and often only served their own needs. Added to all that came worldwide economic crisis of 1929 which struck (as far as memory serves) Germany the hardest in all of europe. Enter Hitler, the "strong man" who gave the people a feeling of "being someone again", improved the economic situation (doesn't matter that hald of it was based on plans of the previous government and the other half was indebting the country like there's no tomorrow, what counts is perception). By contrast, after WW2, the (western) Allies helped Germany and after a relatively short time Western Germany was welcomed back to international community (again, doesn't matter that this in large parts wasn't kindness but needing the Germans agains the Soviet Union and the Marshall Plan helped the US at least as much as it helped Germany, again, what counts is perception).
So, now there is Russia. After the fall of communism what happend? In Russian perception democracy just meant a weak and always drunk Boris Jelzin who stood by and watched while corrupt oligarchs together with "Western" capitalist companies plundered Russia. This in combination with seeing how the once mighty Soviet Union was now, as Russia, only called a "regional power" by western politicians that could do nothing to prevent the former enemy (USA = NATO = EU (perception...)) from encroaching on their borders. Enter Putin. And I fail to see how this would change with further isolating Russia after a hypothetical regime change.
That said, I'm no Russia-Apologist, it doesn't justify attacking another country. Still it would be a grave mistake not to see that pattern and to draw the necessary conclusions from it.

With regard to the MiG 29 discussion and the related debate re blocking their transfer to UKR: I was pondering much earlier in this thread why the US did this, given that NATO have armed UKR in other respects, and the clear combat multiplier they would offer to a UKR counter offensive (which could be so significant as to completely roll over the Russians), as well as what I thought previously are perfectly feasibly solutions to circumvent the thorny issue of NATO "directly supplying them". So here's a hypothesis I've been mulling over that might explain the US inaction on this:

Firstly let's assume (and I think most of us would agree) that NATO MUST steer a path through this conflict that strikes a balance between NATO fighting proxy (by assisting UKR) but not going as far as escalating the conflict (because no one knows where that ends).

But secondly it's NATO's single strategic objective that the result of this conflict MUST result in an outright Russian failure to annex Ukraine, install a puppet Govt or be in any position to seek any sort of favourable terms (IOW it's put in a weak negotiation position). 

So I reason that both of these aims can be served by NATO carefully just doing enough in its military assistance to ensure that Russia is defeated in its aims, but stopping short of assisting UKR so much that it is seen to have smashed the Russians (due only to the help of NATO). The latter might be shaped for Russian public opinion by the Kremlin as not the "defensive NATO" it purports to be, but the former is perceived across the world as failure due to Russian military ineptitude. This result achieves the same end for the Ukraine conflict (militarily) but it mitigates to the maximum the possibility of further escalation between Russia and NATO. In addition, politically and diplomatically, it provides an excuse for the Chinese to bat off any of Putin's requests to back Russia up in any way, other than offer its sympathies.      

In conclusion then; given that its now not unreasonable to think that the Russians are slowly falling apart, and NATO intelligence must have been monitoring this development for a while, I wonder if senior NATO commanders knew already that those MiGs were simply not going to be required. "So that's a no go" as long as the war is projected to remain on course to a Russian defeat, a defeat for which, they will only have themselves to blame.          
 

As mentioned before, anyone crosses the RUS border, gets nuked. No question. And especially if the RUS army is shelled out from a previous war.

Interesting. There are two flashes almost simultaneously, but the smaller one is just off the road to the left of the tank.  Off-route mine, or did someone (maybe the person running on fire) engage tank at point blank range?

Kazan Tatar academic Kamil Galeev continues to provide very insightful tweetstorms on the cultural-historical and politico-economic dynamics in Russia that give context to this conflict. This is his 26th such:
Unrolled thread (sans images) for after the Twits start chiming in, breaking the feed....
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1503430216554795014.html
Every major crisis entails mass redistribution of power, property and status....
Oligarchs' assets frozen, Russian central bank assets frozen. It's the annulment of obligations to both Russian "state" and "private" actors. Arrest of mega yachts are just the most visible element of a general trend - seize what you can seize. It goes both ways though.... 
 During the Soviet Jubilee of 1989-1991 this was happening on all levels. Whoever borrowed some direct control over resources, privatised them. They cashed out and defaulted on their loans. State-appointed CEOs became oligarchs. Governors became kings in their provinces. And so on....
Anyway, it goes on to describe how Putin recentralized power -- and graft! -- among his cronies and backers, but now may stand to lose it back to regional 'barons' as central authority breaks down, again, in the wake of a humiliating defeat....
Galeev also notes elsewhere that Ukraine has its own mafiya 'barons' who have no wish to bend the knee and pay the rake to Moscow.

Better news on the nuclear power plant front. Power is restored to Chernobyl. IAEA's biggest concern seems to be the overworked and isolated staff, with some maintenance being neglected. On the good side, safeguards information is being sent to the IAEA from everywhere except Chernobyl (again, a reminder that the safeguards being mentioned here are not reactor operation but concerned with the safeguarding of nuclear materials from illicit diversion)
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-20-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine
Dave

Ok, so that is a "no" this has not been brought up then.  Ok, the political process belongs to the Ukrainians on this front, not even going to try and make a judgement on what they should or should not do.  My point being the Russian position appears to be softening, which could be an indication that the military strategic reality is starting to sink in, or this is some sort of two-step but I am not sure what the point would be.
As I mentioned before a significant component of war is negotiation be it through violence or at a table, one way or another both sides in this conflict are negotiating.  The primary role of military power is to communicate through violence (and other ways) in order to shape that negotiation.  People were asking for indicators, this is one of them.

Speaking of which...
https://nitter.net/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278

This is a superb walk through Putin's regime. Julia knows her stuff and has a lot of contacts in the Russian government. Really quite good.

Also, don’t forget that “General Mud” is impartial. If the UA counterattacked now, they’d face the same movement problems as the RA. UKR is remaining flexible by using infantry with AI weapons, while the RA seemed to be blindly following the prewar planning. That’s the difference between Western training of the new UA, and the Soviet training of the pre-2014 UA and current RA.

Good interview with a Canadian commander who was involved in NATO training of the Ukrainian forces.  She gets into changes that were instituted  in nature of command structure empowering local commanders with taking initiative rather than the Soviet/Russian top down almost micromanagement approach.  The development and importance of the senior NCOs was also discussed.  She also expresses her immense pride in how the Ukrainian forces have performed and her confidence in them.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2011381827562
 
 

Pretty standard pathogens that you could see in analytical testing labs serving hospitals or pharmaceutical manufacture.
The geobacillus stearothermophilus for instance is used as a reference organism (Biological Indicator)  in the validation of sterilization cycles  in pharmaceutical applications (primarily those manufacturing sterile dosage forms) since its spores are extremely hardy.
 

Yep, having worked in a microbiology lab some 20 years ago those are all pretty common bacteria used for academic research. Some of those I handled frequently in the lab myself. Nothing unusual here, every biology or microbiology department has them stored in liquid nitrogene or at -20degrees somewhere.

Yup. As far as I can see, there's nothing in the list of 'pathogens' to indicate this is anything more sinister than testing disinfectant on common every-day pathogens that you'd find in the average kitchen. 
Suggesting that its a bio-weapons facility is ridiculous with the evidence provided so far.

Attached is an image the the Russians are using of this alleged emergency order to destroy pathogens.  Maybe some of our Ukrainian members can confirm what the text in the order actually says.
Helpfully it lists all the 'pathogens' in latin alphabet (see below)
And to quote from another informed source:
Candida albicans N300 Escherichia coli ATCC N25922 Serratia marcescens N259 Shigella sonnei N151 Shigella flexneri N170 Salmonella rp B Typhimurium N91 Proteus vulgaris N14 Enterobacter aerogenes N190 Staphylococcus aureus ATCC N25923 Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC N27853 Escherichia coli O 55 N43-4 Escherichia coli B N15 Proteus mirabilis N25 Klebsiella pneumonia N38 Corynebacterium pseudodiphtheriticum N17 Corynebacterium xerosis NC 12078 Corynebacterium diphtheriae var gravis tox + Corynebacterium diphtheriae var mitis tox - Bacillus licheniformis BKM 1711 Bacillus stearothermophilus BKM 718

I saw this the other day. (If it's real) Is another clever tactic from UKR to spread the word inside Russia.
 
 

Please just stop.

This is what that misinformation and propaganda stemmed from. The details of this were twisted to fit their narrative and it didn't start last week. This "story" has been circulating for years, always pushed by Russian and Chinese interests.
This effort was sponsored by DTRA - the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. These are the people that work with other countries to PREVENT the spread of WMDs. PREVENT. They were the group that came up with the method of destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. The agreement here is to upgrade lab facilities in Ukraine to better secure them.
I'd suggest a thorough reading.
Dave
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/05-829-Ukraine-Weapons.pdf
 

Lol sure Jan.