Russia and Ukraine

[The Grand Nudger]

You keep talking about russia but your reasons are just one mans? I agree that putin has no way out, and that's why russia will suffer. China, for it's part, sees a weakened and subservient russia as a global bargaining chip. Not weak enough to be a complete joke when they want to launder threats, but too weak to ever harms chinas own interests. China and (what imagines itself to be) the soviets have been at war as recently as 1969. They have a "special relationship" with russia like we have one with the uk, but neither stops either of us from taking advantage of our very special friends.

Case in point, one of the big issues for russia right now is that western capital, western know how, and western personnel ran their fossil fuel system for western benefit. They don't have the same kind of infrastructure to china, for example, as they have to the us. So..because of sanctions, they lose money on their oil (while asia benefits) which is more costly to transport to the alternatove market in the first place. They'll need an equivalent (honestly, bigger) infrastucture program to change that terminus..which takes time they may not have, money they do not have, and skills that have very recently fled - all as the developed world begins to wean itself from the product.

Putins russia could end up the next north korea..and IDK if you've noticed this or not, but shit aint great in nk even though they have chinese support. All of these things, to a person who isn't wholly up putins asshole for the dumbest of canadian cousin fucking reasons, are arguments for russia to avoid the fate putin has in mind for the country. Sometimes, it seems to me, this shit just writes itself. So what..for russia, if they tried to occupy a foreign nation and got their asses handed to them by the locals? It happens. Happened to us recently. We decided we had an incompetent leader that took us into a losing war of ill defined (official) goals and here we are. Still a world power. Still chugging along.