I'm not really sure what Erdogan's game is. Turkish forces have actually fought Russian forces when they strayed into Turkish airspace. Turkey and Russia also have rival interests in former Soviet Republics particularly the Islamic ones.
All of these things can be true. Russia is taking massive losses and clearly not overrunning the country like they thought they would. Nevertheless, they are slowly advancing and capturing cities and will eventually win. Russia's forces they amassed on the border are largely in-country now. Russia has a ton of forces that weren't on the border initially that can still be called in (along with Belarusians and others). Beyond that, agree that info coming out of Ukraine is not super-reliable when it comes to detailed numbers. I doubt anyone really knows accurate counts of deaths given that it's an active warzone.
France and England got involved in WWII when Germany invaded Poland but I have my doubts if the rest of the World would've gotten involved less people would've died. Given the pace of the German advancement even if the US entered the war then the US might not have been able to get enough resources into Europe to prevent most of Europe from falling. Besides that deaths on the Eastern front were far greater than the Western front. If Hitler hadn't invaded the Soviet Union far less people might've died. Of course Germany might not have been defeated, for at least a long time.
THat still doesn't give a real sense of what is the relative weakness and strengths of Russia or Ukraine.
What if I told you the Iraq invasion was never about WMD's but instead to prevent an Arab nation from de-dollarizing oil. What if I told you Putin is only invading Ukraine to destabilize Europe and the US, at the expense of their own economy, and to accelerate federal deficit spending and fast tracking an inevitable deep recession. But I suppose it makes more sense to believe Russia is sending in their best and brightest in an epic fail attempt to take Ukraine. Russia is going to drag this out as long as possible. Fuel prices aren't high enough yet.
I would say if true that was pretty stupid on Putin's part and that such a claim would require a lot of evidence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-26609548 Russia 'planned Wall Street bear raid' (2008) Economic wars are real
Who said Russia sent in their best and brightest? Last I heard it was his conscripts, his expendable soldiers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60711653 India accidentally fires missile into Pakistan Oops.
Honestly, there are probably millions and millions of people following just those 30 people. I don't see why a press secretary shouldn't brief new media outlets.
