This whole situation is wild to me. We can all say that Putin miscalculated this and miscalculated that, but he was REALLY close to overrunning the Ukrainian forces and just taking Kyiv. It was only an internal system of corruption and the complete reluctance of party subordinates to report to their superiors about the actual state of the military's readiness and capability. That's what you get with a system built on "Yes" men operating out of fear, they'll just tell you what you want to hear. Also, nothing indicated NATO members' stalwartness in the face of new aggression ( we all know they hit Crimea with the
).
Now we're in an escalating proxy war in which I don't believe Russia has any hopes of winning due to incompetence and overreach. They will be fielding soldiers who are unmotivated AND now technologically outmatched. Do yall see an off-ramp to this? I don't, and that is concerning. Authoritarian regimes on the scale of Russia can't go quietly into the night, and there is no guarantee that whatever it's replaced with will be any better.