Western officials appeared all but certain Kyiv would fall days after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. Six months later, its forces appear more ready than ever to continue their fight.

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“Many assumed Moscow must have had very high confidence in its extremely dubious political assumptions, that the Ukrainian government would crumble or flee, and Ukrainians – including Russian speakers in the capital and east – would somehow welcome the occupiers killing them and their families,” says Matthew Orr, a Eurasia analyst at private intelligence analysis firm RANE. “Militarily, analysts also assumed that Russia would at least fight methodically and according to its own doctrine rather than attempting a raid to encircle Kyiv, for which it simply did not have the numerical forces to pull off.”

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Read the full US News article here.