I have no doubt Putin will conquer Ukraine and be its master. It is a personal war for him and he will throw into it whatever resources are needed. At no point will he step back and say hey, this is costing way too much, and quit. If it gets really bad for him, I would not be surprised by at least a small nuke on Kyiv.
With what he has done so far he has ensured the hatred of the Ukrainians for at least three generations. Don't be surprised if the ethnic Russians are 'encouraged' to leave Ukraine after this is over. (He can't occupy the place forever.)
Well blinked just gave the go ahead for NATO to send war planes
It gonna get real ugly
“I have no doubt Putin will conquer Ukraine and be its master. It is a personal war for him and he will throw into it whatever resources are needed. At no point will he step back and say hey, this is costing way too much, and quit. If it gets really bad for him, I would not be surprised by at least a small nuke on Kyiv.”
1. Putin has stripped Russia’s various military districts of their best equipment and troops. Unless he starts calling up civilian reservists then what we see is about what Russian can bring to bear in terms of conventional forces.
2. Putin cannot afford to go nuclear. If he does then any argument he has against NATO forward deploying short range nukes will be void. And if he doubles down on his nuclear threats AFTER conducting a nuclear attack then he will invite a devastating first strike against Russia from multiple nations.
I have no doubt Putin will conquer Ukraine
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Didn’t his troops leave Afghanistan licking their wounds?
The Russian hordes will be tied down in an insurgency. Certainly you don’t believe the Ukes haven’t been studying assemblage and deployment of IEDs.
Perhaps what you say is correct but having done so, he has promoted the isolation and destruction of Mother Russia.
His primary task is saving Mother Russia, and he is in fact allowing her the be strangled to death. Failure through success