Originally Posted by JoeBob
I don’t think Russia or the US planned on a war like this.

<snip>

It’s a very dangerous, wasteful, and useless endeavor that if it doesn’t get us killed in the short term, is going to have cascading ramifications for decades to come if not longer with all kinds of unforeseeable outcomes.

I've said this before, but I don't think there's a "win" in this for Putin. At this point he still has support at home, but he's lost it among the international world, INCLUDING the Russian diaspora.

The longer this goes on, the more resources it chews up, the less able Putin will be able to deal with things he could normally deal with easily by throwing some resources at it. Problems in neighboring countries like Georgia and Belarus, problems in Russian states like Chechnya, problems like blown up pipelines. His opponents, as well as opportunists, will start probing, trying to find the weakest points, more and more.

Even IF Putin can turn the Ukraine story around by going "total war", he'll never get the credibility back that he's lost. And the total war option may or may not be a realistic option.

Sic Semper Tyrannis