Subject: Re: Let’s See If This Pans Out for Putin
Define "win". Putin doesn't need to roll tanks into Kyiv to get what he wants (for right now).

Winning would be conquering the territory for good. He can’t keep any of the territory he’s temporarily controlling without continuing the war. It’s not stable. It’s unstable with him in possession, but his army has to be constantly fighting in order to to hold it.

The two of you are banging the drum about how "history tells us about small countries beating big ones" while simultaneously forgetting that loads of big countries have tended to pretty success in curbstomping small ones.

Really? Name three in the last 50 or 60 years. Three large countries that have managed to conquer and absorb a smaller countries over the active opposition of that smaller country’s military. Several of examples of big countries trying to do that - but I’m struggling to think of an example of where they succeeded. Not a lot of places on the map where there used to be a small country but now it’s been absorbed into the big country. Which ones were you thinking of?

I think you aren't getting the difference between an "insurgency" and the main force engaged on the battlefield..

Oh, I get it. But Putin hasn’t even gotten to the point where he’s only dealing with an insurgency. He hasn’t beaten the regular army yet. Because the regular army can thwart his war aims just by fighting to a draw. If Putin can’t beat the Ukrainian army, he can’t win anything. He only controls what his army sits on. And he can’t defeat the Ukrainian army, because he can’t cut off their supplies or destroy their industrial support. Because their supplies and industrial support are all of NATO.

Zelensky lacks the dudes, the guns and the money to push Putin out of the Ukraine.

He doesn’t need to push Putin out of Ukraine. That’s what you don’t get. Putin lacks the guns and money to push Zelensky out of Ukraine - and as long as Zelensky is in Ukraine, Putin can’t win and will eventually have to stop fighting. Because unlike Ukraine, Putins resources are mostly limited to the industrial capacity of Russia - while Ukraine is drawing on the industrial capacity of all of NATO.