What about Korea?
The initial phase of the war (in 2001), was a straight up conventional force on force war. After the US defeated the Taliban standing armed forces overwhelmingly, it then became an insurgency when the rest of the Taliban went into hiding and started striking at the US with (mostly) guerilla-style tactics, interspersed with rare force on force engagements, which it overwhelmingly lost; a very similar situation to Vietnam.
Please answer for me, very simply: what was the total air-to-air kill ratio in Vietnam, and why in light of that would I even give one flying frack how many aces from which side are listed on a table? Here, let me help you:
The problem for your argument is again that the North Vietnamese employed both conventional and unconventional (guerilla warfare) tactics against the US military. This is in the same vein of warfare used by the Taliban. The US overwhelmingly tends to win straight up force-on-force engagements, while suffering a death by a thousand cuts on the receiving end of an insurgency-style war.
You said the offensive on Kiev was a feint for the purpose of "deflecting" from their (true) eastern offensive. Have you changed your mind, then?
On this we could agree.
Putin certainly has come to see that Western sanctions have limited value, and that Russia's economy is more resilient than the West, or perhaps even Putin, believed initially. But this is certainly to have been a conclusion come to by hindsight, not as you say, as a strategy set from the beginning to bleed Europe.
