[smoe]

I don't think Ukraine will win a normal war against Russia, but will have to shift to more guerrilla warfare soon. But on the other hand, is Putin willing to occupy, likely for years, the second largest country of Europe with a population of 44 million to keep the established pro-Russian government actually in power? So far, it doesn't look like Ukrainians would just accept a puppet president, even if all the mayor cities would have been taken.

[AniseAbyss]

I have been thinking along the same lines. Who would actually want to run this pro Russia puppet regime? How many Ukrainians would recognize it as their government? Will the rest of the world ever want to do business with such a regime?

Northern Cyprus has been in a limbo since the 1970s.

[smoe]

For me the only somewhat rational explanation is, that the Kremlin did indeed expect the take over to be faster than the west can agree on their reaction. Like the Taliban taking back Afghanistan with little to now resistance and the president sitting on the first plane out. I can believe that them calling it a military special operation instead of war wasn't just propaganda, but what they thought it was going to be. I'm pretty certain if the war would have been already over, before sanctions were agreed upon, they would have been much tamer. And while yes, everyone would be mad at Putin it wouldn't take too long for things to go back to business as usual. But due to the Ukrainians fighting like hell for their country, I don't really see what "winning" for Putin would look like at this point, even if he takes over all of Ukraine.

[fakedang]

I think that's also a key point of difference between the Afghanistan takeover by the Taliban, and the Ukrainian invasion. Afghanistan was an internal struggle, and an Afghan wasn't really enthusiastic about killing a fellow Afghan, even if he was a Taliban member. Hence why that was a relatively bloodless coup. On the other hand, the Russian army is essentially looked upon by Ukrainians as a modern reincarnation of the Soviet army, rather than as Slavic brothers in hands. The fact that Putin may have chosen to overlook this glaringly obvious difference between the two conflicts makes me wonder how flawed his on-the-ground intelligence must be. The irony, considering his KGB background.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

That's what happened in Iraq. The US went in there, toppled over the place, and put in a government that would bend to Western whims.

[smoe]

Not sure what your point is. The Iraq invasion was 19 years ago, and the US still haven't withdrawn all their troops. Is Putin willing to have parts of his army occupy Ukraine for a timespan such as this?