Russia is stomping the place. You knew what I meant. I want civilians to stop suffering while at the same time avoid the west being drawn in.
So long as former comedian Zelensky was pushing for NATO membership, Russia is not going to stop turning Ukraine into a heap of rubble. We did the same thing to Cuba by attacking that sovereign country by blockading all it’s ports when USSR weapons were discovered in Cuba just 90 miles from US border. I am guessing Russia does not want NATO weapons on it’s border, because Ukraine is not 90 miles away, it is right smack on Russia’s border.
[Russia is stomping the place. You knew what I meant. I want civilians to stop suffering while at the same time avoid the west being drawn in.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
Ultimately, Ukraine needs to inflict enough of a toll on Russia to persuade its rulers that the cost-benefit ratio doesn’t compute. Written guarantees mean nothing. The Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine’s undivided sovereignty, was torn up by Putin in 2014, when he invaded Crimea and took parts of the Donbass.
Remember when Hitler said, after annexing Czechoslovakia, “This is my last territorial demand in Europe”? That’s about what agreements with Russia are worth.
Russia lost 5,700 men in Chechnya in the first campaign, which lasted just under 21 months. It came back for a second round, in which it lost 7,000 men over 9 months, but prevailed. If Ukraine can inflict 100,000 KIA on Russia over the next 2 years, I suspect the Russian appetite for future invasions will be sated for at least the next few decades.
Pilsudski’s Miracle on the Vistula, which secured Poland’s independence after centuries of Russian rule, killed 60,000 Russians. As a target, 100,000 dead Russians is probably on the conservative side, but the costs of war on native soil are so large that it probably pays to buy a little insurance.