| > Honestly I have no idea how's the fighting going there...it seems like we've reached peak interest a few months ago unfortunately. Russia can just keep Ukraine in this weak state, maybe fire a few rockets now and then. This is not an option, due to the amount of lives and equipment lost I don't think Russia has the option to pull out. It's a bit hard to have 50k casualties and lose thousands of pieces armoured equipment, hundreds of planes and just be like 'actually that was for nothing'. > Ukraine would still be a very dysfunctional country with the threat of Russian invasion always on the background I think Russia has more of a problem the longer the war goes on Ukraine is already going to receive NASAMS and IRIS-T anti air equipment from the US and Germany, which would significantly change the balance in the ability for Ukraine to control the sky. The weapons aren't going to stop until Ukraine wins, pulling out also means losing Crimea and all the other gains they had made from 2014 until prior to the full on invasion. Ukraine is more than capable of hitting installations in Russia even in their current degraded state, I don't think anyones gonna let Russia go back over the line and wash their hands of it. > What does Russia gain out of all this shit I have no idea but my point remains is that Russia can keep this up if it wants to Can it though? Russia is quickly running out of pretty much everything, they aren't using T-62s (tanks that don't even have a autoloader, a staple of Russian and even USSR tanks) because they want to its because they have to. I think the systemic corruption in Russia means they cannot fight this war for that long, for more then now? sure, but for years? im not so sure. > The average Russian citizen is either fine with what's happening (surprisingly many) or too afraid to do anything. It's very hard to predict but the chance of Russia making it like this cannot be ignored imo. If you want to this how a country can make it like this look at Iran. The longer this goes on the more the average Russian will be affected, the more assets that will be seized, the more people that will be sanctioned and the more companies that will pull out. |