What's interesting is that this whole challenge is making Russia stronger. Russia has increased its military industry and its now running full steam. Every attack is giving them an opportunity to harden. All of that is meaningless if it makes Russia stronger and more resilient to embargos and cyber/physical attacks in the long run.
For all of this to have meaning it has to have a fall of USSR kind of impact at some point, otherwise we just strengthened one of the world's most dangerous state.
Of course but also Ukraine doesn't have the privilege to care about the long term right now. You can't lose the battle today to win the war that you may never live to fight.
I think Russia would be able to project far much more power had they not attacked Ukraine and entered this long war. At this point the russian bear appears to be made of cardboard, low grade cheap cardboard. Not sure how long they'll be able to sustain this but the more they do the weaker they'll become. They've been losing a lot of ground in the Middle East and Asia as well.
Russia recently announced that they want to import millions of immigrants now, likely because they massacred a big chunk of their young workforce. Their economy and production capacity is slowly crumbling, political dissent is rising. I don't think they're getting stronger.
Are they? They're running at full stream and yet they're still in a years-long stalemate in Ukraine?
Authoritarian governments always fail, because they get used to achieving everything by simply ordering it to be achieved, while the laws of physics don't obey orders.
Meanwhile they're murdering how many of their own soldiers per day?
For all of this to have meaning it has to have a fall of USSR kind of impact at some point, otherwise we just strengthened one of the world's most dangerous state.