Chris

I’m going to spare us both a lengthy reply by focusing mostly on just this point. It seems you’re commenting without having taken much trouble to stay abreast of what’s actually happening here, which makes your confidence in making predictions and assuming events are bearing them out somewhat confusing.

Russia has not taken the part of the Donbas it still wants because it sits the other side of a network of built and natural obstacles that have made it impossible for them to do so. If Russia were simply given this territory, then Ukraine’s defence against a subsequent run on Kyiv goes with it.

It is, simply, strategic suicide for Ukraine to simply give it up. It would be an utterly bonkers concession to make, and it is not going to do so. That’s why Putin is not going to be given it, and also why he can’t take it by force (the UK’s security update last weekend estimated it would take Russia 4 years and another million casualties to do so - even Russia doesn’t have that much time, manpower or soviet-era tanks at its disposal. Also, incidentally, why it’s pretty clear to those paying attention that Putin is not looking for any kind of off-ramp here. He’s not stupid enough to think Ukraine will willingly give this up, even if some of his admirers think they will, or should.

In what way is it false equivalence? Afghanistan was a military adventure which on paper they should have walked all over, which instead attrited them over a decade, bequeathed them a generation of angry, highly trained mafia foot soldiers and de-legitimised the entire soviet system of government.

If its adventure goes on in Ukraine long enough, the Russian government will face all the same pressures, especially with Ukraine steadily taking millions of barrels of refining capacity offline. Russia is rapidly becoming a petro-state with no petrol.