I am quite impressed by Vin's emotional plea and I am sure that the points he has raised are ones that most people would concur with. Unfortunately, I regret that alot of this is idealistic, as much as I would like them to succeed. Russia had, to my knowledge, never been vanquished by a foreign power and even when the like of military geniuses such as Napoleon inflected some serious reverses against them, Russia has , in the end, always succeeed in repelling their enemies. Where Russia has been challenged, it has come at some cost to their opponents whether we are talking about 1812, the Crimean War where this resulted in a national outcry in the Uk or Hiltler in World War 2 which ultimately spelt the end for the Nazis regardless of what was happening on the Western / European /North African fronts which were effectively a sideshow when it came to beating Hitler. Any conclusion in Ukraine will only ever be on terms that are acceptable to Russia and I really feel that this is a problem that will not go away really easily, regardless of Western sanctions and the humiliating performance of the Russian military. I just think that Russia is too large and remote to be "defeated" in the traditional sense.
It is admirable that people should think that Putin gets his just rewards and we should teach him a lesson that invading other democracies cannot be tolerated. Unfortinately, in the real world it is the West which is seeming it's citizens suffer economically to a far greater percentage than in Russia where the standard of living is already poor. If you do not have much already, you have little to lose. Osvalorama is just arguing that the reality is that, no matter how well meaning, measures against Russia will hit the West so hard as likely to be unpallable to many countries. The appetite in central Europe for support for Ukraine will dwindle as soon as their is no fuel from Russia. I cannot see Russia ceasing to be a threat in the short term and " a good result" for the West will ultimately be the serious reduction in Russia's military capabilities.To my knowledge, this is being acheived already. I would concur that we will reach a point where economic factors will kick in and material support for Ukraine will dminish as people realise the futility of it as a long term goal. However, in the long term, Putin and his cronies will get hooked out quite sharpely and violently too.
I do not see the Russians as a threat to the UK or indeed much of Western Europe. You are not going to see tanks rolling over the Rhine. They are simply not capable of anything beyond air strikes. On the ground, the Russian army has performed dreadfully. As I implied yesterday, I feel that the aggression will stop as soon as former states of the USSR are encompassed in to the Russian sphere of influence. Recovering the Baltic states and maybe ensuring that Poland is taken out of the influence of NATO together with a face-saving conclusion in Ukraine would ultimately help restore a kind of status quo. This is absolutely the very best that Russia could expect to hope for and I do not think they will get anywhere near achieving this. The West needs to be pragmatic and appreciate Russia, like China, can effectively do what they wish at the moment but, at some point, the wheels are going to come off for them in the not-too-distant future. If there are lessons that have been learned, it is that the Russian miltary no longer looks quite so threatening as it did in 2021. You wonder how many Russian soldier would ultimately defect if it came to a challenge against the West.
With the West effectively carrying out a proxy war in Ukraine, a "good result" for the West would be to destroy as much hardware as Russia has and limit their capability to wage war. I am not sure that we can manipulate the situation sufficiently to kick Russian troops back over the border. It will be a success for the West by simply reducing their ability to remain a threat for their neightbours.
In my opinion, this conflict really demonstrates how futile war is. You have to have faith in humanity to find a solution as opposed to relying on economics. I really think this will end up being a stalemate that the West will eventually lose interest in and that Russia will end up creating further problems for itself in trying to take territory it ultimately cannot expect to hold. In the end, I feel that it will be the Russians themselves who will be more infliuential in bringing this sorry conflict to an end and they themselves will ultimately take the action that will be terminal for Putin.
