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The key battle of this war was fought on the first day: that's when elite Russian paratroopers landed at Hostomel military airfield north of Kyiv and took control of the airbase, where they hoped to land thousands of ground troops to seize the capital.
As soon as I heard that the Ukrainians had retaken that base I knew the Russians would never succeed. As marauding Russian special forces entered the city, largely using commandeered Ukrainian military vehicles, and those sleeper agents who had not been previously eliminated by Ukrainian special forces, attempted to storm the presidential compound Biden, not unreasonably, offered Zelelnsky an escape route,Zelensky refused, and from that point the west was onboard with the winning side.
Zelensky announced a 3-day curfew during which anyone on the streets would be deemed to be an enemy agent. This smoked out the last of the Russians in the city and they commenced a doomed attempt to encircle the city.