What a bunch of ignorant crap from our Putin lovers, who now go out of their way to praise the mercenary Wagner Group of criminals above the Russian Army. Tomorrow who will they praise? The salt mines have little value except as a hiding place from artillery and accurate missile strikes.
This horrible war, launched by Putin, who arrogantly and disastrously overestimated his own military’s strength and underestimated the Ukrainians willingness to fight in defense of their independence, may indeed go on for a long while. The West will not stop aiding Ukraine anytime soon, and Russia will suffer and bleed almost as much as Ukraine if the war continues.
A bloody Russian “victory” is in nobody’s interests, except maybe Putin’s and his security apparatus. But Russia probably will only doom itself by digging in and continuing or expanding this war.
How could it now — after antagonizing even most native Russian-speaking Ukrainians — ever occupy all of Ukraine? At best it may be able to freeze borders along more or less the 2014 lines, or keep present lines and hold on to Crimea — which falls into a separate category. Before February 24, 2022 Crimea was more solidly and stably “Russian,” and more unlikely ever to be “taken back” by Ukraine, than it is now, when Russians are selling their vacation homes there and the economy is cratering.
The Russian state may even collapse altogether and break into pieces under the pressure. I do not predict this or even favor it, but it is possible. Putin may or may not be ousted in the next period. But if nothing changes Russia will just become more and more backward, a mafia-fascist petro state everyone avoids.
