ianwalsh | There’s a lot of nonsense going around including talk of Russia losing the war because less than 5 days into the war, they haven’t conquered Ukraine.
The German blitz of Poland took 5 weeks. The conquest of France 6 weeks, and people were astonished. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe except for Russia istself
The sources I respect say that Russia is taking losses, but the war is not in question and they are advancing about as fast as the US did into Iraq. Russia will win the war, though they may take more damage than they expected (but since we have no idea what they expected, who knows.) Ukraine is a modern equipped army: it isn’t Iraq with obsolete equipment, or Libya or Afghanistan.
The question is not whether Russia wins the war, it is who wins the peace.
What the US and Europe want is to turn Ukraine into a guerilla quagmire, like Afghanistan in the 80s, or Iraq and Afghanistan were for the US.
What Russia wants is to turn Ukraine into a guaranteed neutral state and withdraw its troops out of the country, minus Donbas and Luhansk.
The good result for the Ukraine, which most Westerners don’t seem to get, is what the Russians want. Austria was neutral in the Cold War and that was not horrid. A multi-year guerilla campaign will devastate Ukraine in ways that will take generations to recover from, because if the Russians have to fight an insurgency, they will be utterly brutal, as they were (successfully) in Chechnya.
Moralist yapping about right to choose is off the board. The only good result for Ukraine and Ukrainians is a negotiated settlement. The West egged them on and left them to swing, as the smart people said they would.
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