Betting on the West on losing interest is a dangerous game. The US stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years and bled $2 trillion doing it. If this is Russia's plan they're literally doing the military equivalent of thinking they can stay solvent longer than the market stays irrational.
Also while Ukraine is weaker than Russia, they are not helpless. Even if Western help stopped this second the majority of pledged military equipment has already arrived, just the equipment currently in country can make any occupation attempt extremely expensive for Russia.
That’s actually an impressive number of misconceptions to pack into such a short post
- America and the west, even at the very height of their power and wealth, never amounted to ‘the market’, never mind today.
- American military boots are not (officially) engaged in Ukraine. That makes it a fundamentally different situation to Iraq or Afghanistan, where the US was directly involved in combat operations.
- Military hardware doesn’t fight wars without soldiers or logistics, and while soldiers might fight without money when they are defending their own homes, not even the writers of Red Dawn could suspend reality enough to think they can operate tanks or aircraft as a resistance force while under occupation.
The west is already loosing patience and interest with Ukraine, very publicly, with America especially desperate to put an end to its European misadventures to start another, bigger military misadventure in Asia.
If the much hyped Ukrainian great offensive fails, it would be a stretch to bet the US will stay onboard for 20 months never mind 20 years.
Despite the west throwing the proverbial economic kitchen sink at Russia, it’s economy is doing better than many of the G7. With China’s economic support to boot, I don’t think Putin is particularly worried about Russia’s ability to go the distance economically.
Given how hard the Ukrainians have fought, it’s obvious occupation will be costly and difficult for Russia. But it’s not like NATO is given them any acceptable alternatives, having already literally coming out to say publicly that what’s left of Ukraine will be absorbed into NATO at the first opportunity. If that’s not forcing Russia to commit to total annexation of Ukraine, I don’t know what will.
