I wonder...
Would Ukranians wage the kind of war the Vietnamese and Syrians wage? A guerrilla war means being willing to accept ten to a hundred losses for each loss for the occupier. Would a European nation these days be willing to accept those kind of losses? Also a good chunk of Eastern Ukraine would support the invasion since they are Russians, any guerrilla war would also be a civil war.
Russians will not fold easy, they have alot of fresh experience fighting guerrilla movements in the Caucus. Chechens are born and bred to kill and are pound for pound the most vicious killers in the world, so I think Russia is more than prepared for that kind of conflict.
I don’t like the idea of Europe turning into a battlefield again after almost a century of relative peace.
Not sure. Let’s see what happens.
There's only 1.3m of them, so Ukrainians can be 3% as pugnacious, on average, and still kill thousands of Russians. Chechnya is an easier place for Russians to fight, because it's only 3% the land area of Ukraine. Iraq's 2/3 the size of Ukraine and mostly desert, where living things stick out, but its Sunni insurgents have had no problem inflicting on both coalition forces and the Iraqi government a continuous stream of casualties, despite being only being 20% of the population at best.
It's possible that neither the leadership nor the populace wants to fight. And that's certainly a respectable choice. The Patriots could have made their peace with the Crown, just as neither the Australians nor the Canadians chose to rebel against what were, after all, their extended kin. If they want anything more than moral support, though, they need to fight. They need to make this decision based only on what they have at hand, rather than be influenced by Western aid.