CONTINUES…
It looks like they weren’t ready and yet the viability of defending the border itself was low, defences need depth and that’s what they created. Despite the scale of the Russian attack it hasn’t been a blitzkrieg by any means. They over-signalled their intentions days in advance and their troop build up was no secret.
The real question is what is their objective? Buffer zone? Forcing the repositioning of Ukrainian forces? Kharkiv itself seems way beyond them, but forcing a wave of civilians to evacuate and cause internal mayhem as 1 million people evacuate isn’t impossible. Misery, after all, is what Russians are so good at creating.
How this attack pans out in the next few days will be critical. The key thing here is it’s not fixed in place and it’s very mobile - and that means it can be dealt with the same way - and while daring, a mobile counter attack at this stage is still viable if it can be mounted.
I suspect though that the Ukrainian forces will try and do what they can from behind their defence lines and attrit the Russians from their. The danger then is the Russians dig in and getting them out again becomes the problem all over again.

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!