Originally Posted by
Brewster Buffalo
I agree.....and isn't this the reason Russia had to quit Afghanistan though it took some years to get that point. In Afghanistan Russian casualities are believed to be 15,000 deaths; a figure probably exceeded in Ukraine so maybe it happen sooner.
However I suspect that Putin would hold defensive postions during the winter and attempt a full offensive in the spring with aim of the destroying the Ukrainian army.
I don't believe you can do a direct read-across from Afghanistan to Ukraine. For Putin (and also for Russia more generally), Ukraine is an existential matter in a way that Afghanistan just wasn't - the Russian people could walk away from Afghanistan when it all got a bit too much, in a way that they just won't be able or willing to walk away from Ukraine regardless of the death toll. For them, Ukraine
is Russia.
The only way this can end favourably for Ukraine and the West, is to give Ukrainians the tools to end the war decisively on their terms, and that means long-range weapons. Let Putin talk about 'escalation' - he's being doing that since before the war started. He's bad but he's not (yet) mad, and he knows as well as anyone what the West can inflict on Russia if it oversteps the mark.