“Once civilians are evacuated then Russia is free to turn the cities to rubble and killing most of those still trapped within.”
Same thing would happen if Ukraine surrendered. Better to fight and die than live without freedom.
Russia will have won a Pyrrhic victory, and will forever be despised and vilified and condemned. And that is one thing Russians fear above all else: National humiliation. And they will have it.
Russia has more sympathy and support outside of the usual western countries than you may thing. And many have already balked at sanctioning trade with Russia. I’m not even talking about China and India, there’s plenty of others.
Fauci and Putin will walk hand in hand into the sunset.
“Russia will have won a Pyrrhic victory, and will forever be despised and vilified and condemned. And that is one thing Russians fear above all else: National humiliation. And they will have it.”
Certainly that will be true for many in the west.
But a significant minority in the west, and most everyone in the rest of the world will see:
- The US is not the exclusive hegemon
- NATO is fragile, feckless, hyperbolic and ineffective
- A powerful, willful nation can force them to back off
- There will be no external security arrangement for Ukraine except Russia, and they will forever be a Russian protectorate
- Politics via other means still works
- The US is the world’s most dominant, effective information warfare entity in the history of mankind
Realpolitik will be a difficult adjustment for the perfumed princes of the west. So they’ll continue to moralize while ignoring their real, essential interests:
- Energy independence
- Free development and flow of energy worldwide
- Free development and flow of all commodities worldwide
- Controlled, beneficial (to us) flows of finished products worldwide
- Advanced, capable and dominant defense
- All corners of the Pacific ocean
- Abrogation of the NATO treaty