North Vietnam couldn’t beat America. Afghanistan couldn’t beat the Soviet Union and then beat America. And, of course, Ukraine couldn’t resist a Russian invasion for years.
If Russia can lose, then Ukraine can win, and Russia can definitely lose. By some measures, they have already lost. If this war was to “stop NATO expansion” then they lost when their aggression caused Finland to join. If their objective was to reenforce their image of dominance in the region, that has failed spectacularly.
It’s funny that you would bring up Vietnam because there is a parallel there, just not the one you think. The regime in western Ukraine that US backing bears a lot of resemblance to the regime US was backing in south Vietnam, and it’s now collapsing in exactly the same way.
What you don’t seem to understand is that there was already a civil war between western and eastern Ukraine since the coup in 2014. Let’s take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here’s the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
here’s how the election in 2004 went:
this is the 2010 election:
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
Ukraine is not some homogeneous blob, but a country that’s divided precisely along the current combat lines.
Ukraine split amicably with Russia and the borders were agreed upon after the fall of Soviet Union. The same source that you linked for your last picture would have also shown survey that Russian-speaking Ukrainians also do not wish their country to be split despite the disagreements.
But Putin exacerbated the division for his own end (same as how he stoked tensions in Georgia). That’s like Republic of Ireland stoking tensions in Northern Ireland to get back the north. Or, Turkey doing the same to take over the entirety of Cyprus after already taking over the northern part of the island. All of those would violate international sovereignty of a nation under the UN Charter, which Russia have practically done in the case of Ukraine.
Russian MO is so easy to call out. They copy the playbook from another fascist claiming ethnic Germans abroad were being oppressed to justify invasion. Even though there was no evidence.
It’s pretty funny how when Donbas wants to separate from nazis, it’s Putin, Putin, Putin. But when US backed DPP wants separatism in Taiwan, it’s just wholesome freedom and democracy. Apparently, people in Donbas don’t get any agency of their own, and nobody can imagine why they wouldn’t want to live under a western backed regime that’s trying to erase their identity.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You didn’t just move the goalposts, you obliterated them. Ukraine can win. I’m not interested in your goofy ass obfuscations about Ukrainian society.
Ukraine very obviously can’t win, but if you still haven’t figured that out yet then there’s little point talking with you.
