Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

I feel like Putin could've avoided all this current mess in the first place, were it not for his big ego. He, and the Russian government, should've taken more time  (before invading) to consider whether this whole invasion idea was a really good idea because clearly, things aren't going well for them, and they know that the Western powers weren't going to sit by and just watch. I know, hindsight is 20/20, but this is the situation Russia is in now. And both Russia and Ukraine are suffering because of it.

As for this whole idea about how Putin is sort of like the good guy in this story, and who just happens to be horribly misunderstood (which is what I keep reading on Quora), I don't buy it one bit.

ETA: It also doesn't matter whether the Russian government was provoked into doing it, because at some point, each government (and individual persons) should be held accountable for their own actions, and we shouldn't keep blaming others for what we ourselves do.

If Putain had done any sort of serious long term analysis of the Ukraine invasion, he would have realised that even if (somehow) his half baked invasion plan worked, the occupation was doomed to massive failure within a few years.  Even by conservative efforts (assuming the lower end on number of occupation troops required, and assuming minimal post war resistance), it would have required a full time force of 800,000 troops to keep Ukraine occupied.

This is something Russia wouldn't have been able to manage for a matter of weeks, never mind the decades it needed to strengthen its grip on Ukraine.

But then again Putain is a narcissistic idiot who thought the people of Ukraine would immediately fall on their faces and start kissing his arse.

I think what he expected was a Belarus-type of solution for Ukraine. In fact if the Maidan revolution had not happened in 2015, none of these would have happened. This Putinian ideology would have worked. Many of us would have not known the exact location of Ukraine and Russia would still be a China-like force in the world. But things turned in a much unexpected manner. Last February, I personally expected a Syria like resistance and a long term war of resistance like the Soviet Campaign in Afghanistan (perhaps even less because the terrain in Ukraine is not so easily defensible as Afghanistan).
 
But yes, as the head of state of a former superpower, he seems to have made great miscalculations. What a mess indeed