Russia and Ukraine

[Anomalocaris]

Oh absolutely.  Everything about the invasion demonstrates just how true all of that is.

The fact that the initial invasion went much more poorly, Russian forces proved much less capable, and adverse world reaction turned out to be  much stronger and more kinetic, than might have been hoped for didn’t prevent Russia from attaining a position to gain its core objective suggests he is a more sophisticated strategists than he is being given credit for.

A sophisticated strategists is not one who always wins or who is always right.    It is one who identified the core objective, and gains the core objective while accounting for the possibility of defeats and being wrong in other assumptions.

The only point that might be open to challenge is did he have to do this at all.  And I think he did, because NATO-ized Ukraine is truly intolerable to any Russia that would like to have geostrategic autonomy.