It’s been more than a month since the start of the special military operation to denazify Ukraine, so it only makes sense for me to give a review of the progress of the operation and discuss its future prospects. In short, the original plan to seize Kiev, Voznesensk, and Harkov with essentially nothing has failed. This is not to say the operation has been a complete failure, but it is to say the original plan was bad and its flaws will reverberate throughout the coming months. The first and most obvious error was the bizarre decision to assault Kiev from the East, via Konotop and Bobrovytsia, without seizing either Chernigov, Sumy, or much of anything in the northern part of the country. This proved to be a disastrous decision, with this front having the largest per capita losses of any of those the Russians opened. There was no point in attempting to reach Kiev from the East, and the assaults on Kiev’s Eastern suburbs proved to be a failure. Luckily, the Russians began to remedy this decision by entering Shostka on March 18 and encircling Chernigov about two weeks ago. The next few weeks will see a cleanup of this sector, including the capture of all the cities of the Desna valley, thus creating a second major Russian-occupied area in Ukraine during this operation (edit: they actually ended up withdrawing from this sector entirely. Do I understand this decision? Yes. Do I agree with it? No.).