Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Wars are 'won' by many means. Unless the West goes in with boots on the ground military, which would be beyond retarded for any number of reasons, the Ukrainians cannot win this war by conventional means. Not going to happen. I support the west arming the Ukrainians and the across the board sanctions against Russia because it buggers Russia up on all fronts. And the longer they're bogged down the more they will come to the table, or their country and autocrats face utter ruin. As it is they're a dead man walking politically, economically, militarily and morally.

Again read what I wrote. Where did I say no army? Where did I say no EU? I would bet the farm that before this war no way in hell would the majority of people here would want Ukraine in the EU until serious changes were made in their country. The EU wouldn't. The need for those changes didn't magically go away.

Going beyond the break away regions was baffling on so many fronts. If he'd 'just' taken the 'independent republics' I'd be very surprised if a tenth of the shít that has descended on Russia would have happened. I think putin simply got high on his own supply and believed the bullshít he was peddling and what his underlings told him. That the Ukrainian people would laud him as a saviour from 'nazis' and welcome him in with little enough resistance. The way the Russian troops behaved in the very early stages of this war suggests they thought similar. That Ukrainian guy who stopped his car and chatted with the Russian troops who ran out of petrol and suggested he'd give them a tow, back to Russia, with laughter all around. I can't see that happening today. More like what happened to that elderly couple just driving in their car.

The car being hit by the tanks with no burning is not a surprise OH. We're all too used to seeing Hollywood images of war and when explosions go off there's a fireball. Not unlike every car in a Hollywood movie that goes off a cliff bursts into flame and then explodes. Or when someone shoots a pistol round into a gas cannister and Kaboom. Doesn't happen. Unless it's an incendiary round designed to start fires the blast itself drives oxygen out of the area and can even put out existing flames. Most of the energy goes into the unfortunate target. Burning if any is a side effect of flammable material catching fire after the event. I'm skeptical of some stuff out there, but not that sad event. Trigger happy goons in a war zone firing on anything that moves and in this case the tragic and criminal death of an elderly couple.

Afghanistan was and is a very different environment. The American coalition couldn't hold it, the USSR had no hope. What's different? Afghanistan is not so much a country as a patchwork of fiefdoms ruled by local warlords. They fight among themselves but respond to external threats together with a strong faith as the glue. It's one of the most mountainous regions on the planet and is decentralised among those mountains and valleys and roads are basic if even present, where defenders can dig in and hide and modern military tech has a hard time taking them out. You go valley by valley and they just move and come back when you're gone. Beyond Kabul the infrastructure is basic to non existent and the people are used to and happy living in that. Taking Kabul is a piece of piss, extending that to the rest of the country isn't. Not by a long shot. The country is a graveyard to many military misadventures over centuries.

Ukraine is one of the flatest nations out there, with some mountains to the very West. A modern more centralised nation with modern infrastructure, that people are used to and need to live, which makes it far more vulnerable. Complex systems always are. To really stretch a comparative anology, Afghanistan is like a rock, Ukraine is like a pocketwatch. Which is easier to break?

Ukraine was already a proxy peace and now a proxy war. That ship has sailed too.