by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m clearly not an expert on either Russia or Ukraine because I keep getting things wrong. But that doesn’t stop me from struggling to understand what the fuck is going on with the two nations at the moment.
Russia continues to build up troops around Ukraine to a level that it makes you think we’re going to have to imagine that Putin isn’t thinking just a simple smash and grab operation, but a general war. The reason why I can’t understand that this may be a real possibility is by every metric Russia could take a huge chunk of Ukraine, but it just couldn’t keep it.
Putin would be flirting with existential disaster long-term because even if the Ukrainian government sued for peace or collapsed the amount of partisans who would take it upon themselves to go to war against the Russian army on a personal level would be enormous.
Long term, Russia, just like with Afghanistan, would have to leave Ukraine to its own devices. I don’t know. I wonder what I’m missing.
