Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

Which is what happened in toe majority of modern Russia's wars. They made it through Napoleon because of weather but he was at the gates of Moscow, WW1 collapsed the monarchy, Finland sent Stalin packing with a few sharpshooting cross country skiers and the Taliban sent them running once more and was one of the big final straws for the USSR. WW2 is their one true heroic victory and they barely made it out of that one through sheer bloody mindedness. Historically they have never been a good invader.

Oh I touched a nerve did I. A response full of abuse, just about your level from my experience!

Someone's not been paying attention

We cannot change the mistakes of the past, only learn from them to do the right thing in the present.

If the Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan rumours are true hes committing to holding hostile territories of angry populations altogether totaling around 90 million and I cannot see how that is possible. Also Kazakhstan is 70% muslim and Uzbekistan is 95% so he risks angering a hell of a lot more people and countries with such a move.

" Baltics are next on his hit list... possibly Turkey too."

What evidence have you for this?

I think the Russian will struggle to hold the whole of Ukraine, if they manage to invade the whole country which is not certain. Any further expansion will involve a direct response from NATO. Putin might be mad ( really) but I don't think he is that stupid. From Putin's point of view the time for an attack was narrowing. The west had made it clear they would allow Ukraine join NATO and that would rule out any Russian attack. So it was now or never.

Appreciate it is almost impossible to know what the Russian plan is but could it be that after installing a puppet government in Kyiv they will retreat to the Donbas regions? We ahve to assume a long-term standoff between Russia and West and assume Putin has this factored in.

But we are dealing with a madman so who knows.

The lack of engagement from the West is the right strategy, it blows Putins rhetoric about Western threats and aggression out of the water. It will hopefully play badly for him at home, they invaded another country and still haven't been attacked by anyone else. If others aren't taking this opportunity to attack, then clearly they are not under threat.

Hopefully the Ukrainians can give the Russian military a seriously bloody nose. That should be the wake up call that Russia is not as militarily capable as they might think. Further expansion may not be successful, particularly if they have to devote significant ongoing resources to stopping Ukrainian insurgency. Anything other than steamrolling Ukraine with minimal casualties will have a lot of Russians questioning if it was worth it. Ordinary people will not support the invasion if they are seeing significant numbers of their own coming back in bodybags for no real gain.

Ultimately the only ones who can remove Putin are internally in Russia. Some or all of high ranking officials/the military/general population have to get rid of him one way or another. That is why sanctions are the best policy. Completely hobble their economy and supply the Ukrainians that they put up a good fight, then those groups will seriously question what Putin brings. He only has to lose one, then the others will soon follow. The keys is draconian sanctions and keeping Ukraine resistance going for as long as possible.

You don't get to be the biggest country in the world by being historically bad at invading places