We all know the final outcome of this. In the face of the overwhelming force Ukraine faces it seems to me any help we provide is just going to prolong the agony.
[1]: https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the-...
I honestly don't know what Putin is expecting to gain from this. The occupation won't pay for itself and Russian economy is already bleak.
I have my suspicions that a few of them believe the opposite.
the Taliban and IS dragged out the conflict in the middle east for 20 years and came out victorious against an army that spent trillions on that conflict. That was after said army was defeated in Vietnam as well.
At what cost? America and their allies would have left a long time ago without the Taliban.
Yes they can bomb the bases and airports, capture few important points, but if population offers resistance in form of guerilla warfare, russians will bleed and will bleed hard and achieve nothing. Not that russian oligarchs like Putin ever cared about casualties even on their side.
I am not claiming its the best approach overall, maybe even the worst in terms of casualties. But there is something in human nature that reacts wildly when oppression comes and freedoms are being taken. Americans should understand this very well.
I personally think his game is just to install pro-russian government forever and few military bases and withdraw most of the army. Something like second Belarus. Look at the map - he will have 500km wall from rest of Europe. Now the billion $ question is, what he thinks about baltic states, since they are part of Nato.
Short of actual military action from the West, which is extremely unlikely as that would give grounds to retaliation by Russia, escalating the war outside Ukrainian borders, Russia seems only days away from removing the Ukrainian government...
The rational thing to do right now is to start planning for the aftermath: how to get Russia out of Ukraine as soon as possible once they've taken control of the country. IMO there's only one way: to dialogue with Putin and finally accept some kind of terms for their removal from Ukraine. This is not what anyone wanted, but now that we've let Putin get to Kiev, what exactly are the options?
Anyone who thinks sending money and weapons to Ukraine will help solve the problem (including, to my horror, the UK government) seems to completely ignore the reality of the situation and is hoping for a delusional outcome, and worse, opening the possibility for things to go wrong and foreign soldiers being killed while trying to reach Ukrainian troops - which may without a doubt trigger a counter-attack by NATO and total escalation of the conflict (which should be priority number one to avoid right now!).
1. Appeasement is not an option. It just encourages them to do it again.
2. It is up to the Ukrainians if they want to fight to the bitter end. We can't make them, we can't stop them, but we can have their backs.
3. The purpose of resisting an illegal occupation is to drive up the cost of staying as high as possible. This works, even without economic sanctions. Just ask Vietnam or Afghanistan.
4. In a proxy war, countries officially "ignore" inconvenient facts because acknowledging them will cause a more complicated conflict. This happened all over the Cold War, but as recently as Afghanistan the US had to turn a blind eye to Pakistan's behavior.
5. Nothing is predetermined or strictly predictable. History is chaos. The only thing we know for sure right now is this will be hell for the Ukrainians.
Today we are richer than Portugal.
Jesus Christ, how do you people get so callous? What is wrong with you? who hurt you? What made you give up empathy and humanity?
I'll never understand you people.
Of course they have a chance. Their current strength is about 465k men (and women). Add on top the general mobilization happening now. They're also strongly motivated, which the Russians aren't. Ukraine can definitely do this.
Also, giving up doesn't guarantee people will be safe. Russian occupation forces aren't usually very nice.
They can't win a guerilla war.
Let's just say that when the invaders eventually left - as they always do - that group didn't fare particularly well. It's called cowardice, if coupled with actions that benefit the enemy it's called collaboration and is usually dealt with for what it is: treason.
I have no dog in this particular race other than that I know both a number of Russians and a number of Ukrainians so consider my views 'balanced' for what that is worth: down with Putin, and I hope that the Russian soldiers know that they may win the initial push but the price will be substantial and eventually they will lose.
The weird thing is that if anything the result of this is that NATO will expand, precisely to ward of this sort of idiocy.
As for agony: some prefer to fight rather than to suffer under an invader, which is a special kind of agony, which tends to last a lot longer and which will endanger not just you but also your family, your children and so on. Russia has a long history of invading other countries and it invariably spells utter misery for the occupied people.
And many seem to have forgotten under Putin's propaganda of "the NATO provocations" that the free and democratic societies of the former Soviet Union / Eastern Bloc chose to join NATO after Russia's military actions, particularly after the events of 1991-1996 (Transnistria conflict, Abchasian separatist conflict, "intervention" in Chechnya).
It is the fault of Russian politics that NATO is so close to its borders!
"just so we can say fuck you Putin"? Really? That is how you are attempting to frame the situation of a clear victim defending itself against an aggressor that has been appeased for years now?
So you believe that the attacking entity should always win, no questions asked? Is conflict to be avoided at all costs? Can I come into your home and just claim your house if I threaten to escalate with violence? You wouldn't want any conflict, so the right move would be to just give it to me.
Nobody is saying that.
Depending on the topic you can easily call it victim blaming too.
Somewhere you have to draw a line, you can choose for yourself whether that line is the Ukrainian border, Kiev or France. But you too will find that you have a line. Or maybe you don't.