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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

I also find it reminiscent of the Winter War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War), but it should be noted that the Soviet Union ended up winning that war. Finland far outperformed what should have been expected from a nation going up against an invader so much larger than it, but in the end the Soviets learned from their initial stumbles and overwhelmed Finland with sheer numbers.

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I don’t think the Finns feel too bad about that “loss”. They got to keep their independence and 99% of their land against a orders of magnitude more powerful foe. If Ukraine fares as well I’ll be a happy man.

While they got to keep their independence, they lost almost 10% of their land.

Putin's strategic goals for this war clearly require a puppet regime in Ukraine.

If the war ends with Ukraine ceding some land but staying independent and anti-Putin, then that might be a loss for Ukraine but it would also be a loss for Russia as the strategic outcome would be worse than the pre-war global status quo, as we're seeing a more unified and militarized Europe (Germany just anounced literally doubling its military budget), Finland+Sweden likely joining NATO. I.e. Russia winning a battle in this way doesn't seem to lead to Russia winning the strategic war.

It should be noted that the Soviet Union ended up winning that war.

WP says "Most sources conclude that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland", acknowledging that some don't. And also offers the following tasty tidbit:

  "Commander Meretskov announced publicly that the Finnish campaign would take two weeks at the most. Soviet soldiers had even been warned not to cross the border into Sweden by mistake."

In any case the narrative I've always heard is that whatever its initial goals were -- the final outcome (and especially the amount of territory ceded) fell far short of those goals and at far greater cost than anticipated.

If you know of an analysis that (cogently) suggests otherwise, feel free to share it with us.

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