This is not exactly filler, but filler lite or filler adjacent material.
Scott Ritter was a military intelligence analyst and then went to work at the UN, where he blew the whistle on the fact that Iraq didn’t have any WMDs.
He’s since been a commentator. I think he got did up for like, trying to meet a 16-year-old girl on the internet or something, and was in prison for a while.
Anyway, he always has different comments on Russia, which was his main point of study in the military, and he says that Vladimir Putin is very worried about Russia’s long term prospects and feels his country is losing too many people due to not breeding enough, and so he literally wants the population of the Ukraine, and he’s planning to completely seal the country.
He also says all the same stuff I’ve been saying about the causes of the war, and the fact that Russia is willing to take military casualties in order to avoid civilian casualties because he is doing hearts and minds.
Anyway, it’s 12 minutes that I can say increased my understanding, so I give it a recommendation.
It is two or three days old, which is a long time in war time, but he’s not really talking about specifics of events so that doesn’t matter much.
I can’t find an article he’s written with these exact talking points. Most of what he’s written recently is just the same stuff I’ve written with regards to NATO backing Putin into a corner.