And you even write that $x makes hard things easy. Hope much did the US pay to lose against Iran? Winning against anyone for the same sum isn't easy.
Russia is not fighting Ukraine, Russia is fighting NATO. And we are in dangerous territory.
Emmanuell Todd predicted this and this is not a person to be taken lightly (e.g. predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976 as a 26 years old PhD student): https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/11/how-the-west-was-...
We need just a few more sanctions against Russia and we will have a Regime change. The regime change will come, but likely different than we thought - AfD in Germany, Farange in the UK and LePen in France.
Russia thought the Ukrainians wouldn't put up much resistance and launched a war of conquest to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU. It's failed in it's gamble and it has to experience the consequences.
Russia often reforms only after military defeat exposes how badly the state and army are failing: Crimea pushed the Great Reforms, Japan helped trigger 1905, and Afghanistan plus the Cold War strain fed the Soviet collapse. Loss forces changes that peace lets the system avoid. And maybe we'll get a conciliatory government not an aggressive one doubling down.
Yeah there was something with Cuba. America attempted the same thing in Cuba as the 2014 Ukraine rebellion Russia fomented and equipped, but instead of failing in 8 years, it utterly failed immediately and the Americans didn't decide to double down on their failure and actually invade like Russia has. America then allowed Cuba to be a Soviet ally, for everything except for forward deployed nuclear weapons which it then removed from Turkey.
Denmark has give all her ammunition to Ukraine.
There is little of equipment left. And nobody willing to fight in the West. For what? For a crumbling economy? Unaffordable house prices? Collapsing social systems because two many immigrants draw from them? (Germany, UK)?
Good luck mate. I am not going to fight.
Emmanuel Todd: "Russia has won the war, the Ukrainian army is in its death throes" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2zI3vzLKmao
Or use pass paywalls clean plug-in.
Unfortunately you are correct, as Ruski Mir's greatest export is corruption.
The West suffers from the Paradox of Tolerance, and is generally unprepared to deal with Moscow's political operations.
The good news is that those are just three countries, and the EU is made of many more.
The crazy thing to me is that all that Europe wants is for Moscow to join us in the 21st century, and just stop murdering your neighbors.
Apparently this is too much to ask of the old guard. But, we all went through this and eventually became "normal countries." Russia will as well one day, and the Russian people will be one of the greatest beneficiaries of this maturation.