Originally Posted by
melmothtw
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.
Your point about the comparison between Afghanistan and Ukraine is valid which means this conflict has aspects of a civil war. But no matter how many victories the Ukrainians manage I don't believe that they will ever have the military strength to drive the Russians back behind their borders. To put it crudely the Ukrainians need to inflict 4 casualities for every 1 of their own.