In 1979, the total population of Afghanistan was a mere 15.5 million - compared to the Soviet Union's population of about 265 million.
So if you want to make a comparison based upon historical precedents, the logical conclusion would be that Russia will lose and withdraw.
Regards,
I was waiting for someone to either make this comparison or compare this war to the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan or the U.S. in Vietnam.
The comparison falls flat because Russia is not trying to occupy a far away land that is full of resistance fighters consisting of a completely different culture.
It is taking back territory it had back when it was the "Soviet Union" with 265 million people, filled with people who, if occupied, will not try to become 'resistance fighters' mining the roads with IEDs.
Make no mistake, Russia is going to keep the Donbas region at a minimum, as well as Crimea. Their goal for the rest of Ukraine is not to occupy it but to install a government sympathetic to Russia, the same as Russia has done in former Soviet Union bloc countries such as Georgia and Chechnya.
Perhaps you don't realize that half of the population in Donblas speak Russian, do not want to be part of Ukraine, and have been fighting a civil war against Ukraine since 2014, and that Russia has been supplying the Donbas Russians in that civil war.
So unless you want to send American and European troops into Ukraine, there is no 'victory' for Ukraine other than accepting defeat in the East and hope to hold onto their government and the rest of their territory in Central and West Ukraine.
And you can blame the Obama administration for this war, since it did nothing when Russia was arming the Donbas breakaway faction, and when Russia invaded and occupied the Crimean peninsula.
And Ukraine as a whole is just as corrupt as the Russians, so there is no moral high ground to be had by supporting either side in this conflict.