[WJW]

The west can do for the Ukrainians what Pakistan has been doing for decades for the Taliban: provide safe havens, supplies and weapons to small insurgent groups doing guerilla strikes against the Russians. The Ukraine is so large that to keep it occupied would take hundreds of thousands of troops and Russia cannot afford to keep up such mobilisation for long. They have a few months at most and properly beating an insurgency takes years if not decades.

I don't really buy the Chernobyl argument either. If the NATO starts shooting the Russians already have nuclear weapons to act directly. No need to crack open an old nuclear plant and hope the wind doesn't change.

[pessimizer]

> The west can do for the Ukrainians what Pakistan has been doing for decades for the Taliban: provide safe havens, supplies and weapons to small insurgent groups doing guerilla strikes against the Russians.

This would be a great tactic to reduce Ukraine to a pile of smoking rubble over a couple of decades of war. I'm not sure that's a great outcome for Ukrainians.

[WJW]

What the West does is what will be the best for them, not necessarily what will be the best for Ukrainians. I'm sure there are a couple of foreign policy officials somewhere that would love the idea of Russia being tied up in the Ukraine for decades instead of using that capacity for bothering other countries.

[henrikschroder]

Why would Russia stay in Ukraine for decades?

The will to commit Russia's military in Ukraine is pretty much Putin's alone. His narrative around the invasion was proven completely untrue within days. The sanctions are making life extremely difficult for both ordinary Russians, and for the wealthy oligarchs. Ordinary Russians are being asked to go die in a war against their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, who keep telling their Russian brothers and sisters to stop the madness and get the fuck out. And finally, Putin is 70, how much longer is he going to stay in control?