GUERRILLA WARABATTBQ11 said:RogerEnright said:
Too expensive. They lost too much equipment for what they will likely get.
And what did they get? Likely years of beating down the population in the East. There is a real risk that this could become another Afghanistan for them.
It will be worse. The Ukrainians will be far more well equipped and infinitely angrier than the Afghanis. The Russians will be in an area where the insurgency may actually be more well equipped than they are, and armor and helicopters will be death traps. Any puppet government they install is likely to be immediately decapitated. And even if Zelensky asks them to stop, there's a very good chance they won't. There's so much heavy weaponry and ammunition floating around now that anyone could build an IED or open fire on Russian soldiers or civilians with a heavy machine gun to avenge whoever and whatever the Russians have taken. The Russians got greedy and punched a hornets' nest, and they're going to get stung for a long time.
On top of that, as others have mentioned, this has likely already cost them more than Afghanistan in terms of men and equipment, and it's only been 5 weeks. Give it 5 years or even just 5 months and they will question the continued utility of being there. Russia will not be able to hide the casualties and losses like they're trying to do now, either. There will be videos of ambushes and IED's blowing Russian soldiers to pieces that they can't keep off social media, and families of dead soldiers will certainly talk. It will be evident they're losing people every day, no matter how much they try to ignore it on state TV.