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Comment by sinyug | Hacker News Reader

> Has anyone done a decent job explaining what the most likely outcomes actually are?

There is only one outcome here: Ukraine becomes a Russian client state.

Russia then decouples from the West. Other African and Asian countries start thinking in similar terms. You cannot have the US and Europe determine your national security interests by using the threat of sanctions as a Damocles sword all the time.

Russia controls the second most powerful military on the planet. Any suggestion that they will be defeated in Ukraine is wishful thinking.

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The United States military is the most powerful military on the planet. Any suggestion that they will be defeated in Afghanistan is wishful thinking.

> The United States military is the most powerful military on the planet. Any suggestion that they will be defeated in Afghanistan is wishful thinking.

The US is not Russia and Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden is not Putin. While no one can predict what he is thinking, the Second Chechen War could be a template if the Ukrainian leadership does not yield.

Putin is not Yeltsin, Ukraine is not Chechnya, Zelanskyy is not Yandarbiyev, and 1999 is not 2021, so no, the Second Chechen War would not be a valid template.

I, too, can needlessly zoom in to try and refute any comparisons to other situations.

If anything, not being applicable to Afghanistan is even worse for Russia, considering how little international support Afghanistan received, and how much worse at urban warfare the Russian military is compared to the US military.

> comparisons to other situations.

It is not about random comparisons but the will to follow through on what must be done. The US had no real stake in Afghanistan. Russia did in Chechnya and it does in Ukraine.

We will know in a few weeks what his plan is as it is executed on the ground.

Russia has a lot less to gain (hardly anything real) than Ukranians have to lose, which is why the Afghanistan comparison is apt.

And no, we won't have any clue about what "his" plan was, because it's already failed. Now we will see how Russia's military reacts to initial failure.

Incidentally Russia never did very well in Afghanistan either.

You don't win insurgencies, especially when people are defending their homes and money and material is coming from outside.

> Russia then decouples from the West.

Who are they going to sell their oil and gas to, then?

> Who are they going to sell their oil and gas to, then?

The world is full of countries who want oil and gas. Even the US and Europe have left open a big hole in their sanctions for oil/gas supplies because they need Russian fossil fuels.

> The world is full of countries who want oil and gas.

So they’re going to replace “selling to the highest bidder” with “selling to the 10th highest bidder”. That’ll do wonders for Russia’s economy, I’m sure.

The US doesn't need Russian oil. It's 7% of the country's total petroleum imports, compared to over 50% for Canadian oil.

Pakistan PM Khan is in Moscow right after the invasion declaring "it is an exciting time." He's working on a gas pipeline deal with Putin.

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