> This gets to something I've been wondering about, what is the winning condition for Russia now? Before the invasion? The West is lazy and does nothing. (see

> This gets to something I've been wondering about, what is the winning condition for Russia now? Before the invasion? The West is lazy and does nothing. (see Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine 2014) Now? Unicorns and fairy dust. Russia is relevant on the world stage for a few reasons: 1. They have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. 2. They're big bad bullies who give people offers they can't refuse. 3. They're a significant producer of crude oil and natural gas. (they do not have significant capacity to refine crude oil) They've overplayed their hand regarding #2. Lots of countries are falling over themselves to join NATO and/or the EU. It's been shown that as a world power that their military ... well it sucks. They have a locally significant military, not a global one. Their best customer for crude oil and natural gas is the EU. The EU is now all-in on relieving themselves of the need to buy any sort of fossil fuels, and especially not from Russia. They can sell crude oil and natural gas to China still, but China doesn't really need those things. They need refined gasoline; but China is as fit to develop those capabilities as Russia is. They could absolutely crush and subjugate Ukraine by conscripting 200,000 or so more troops, and just lay waste to Ukraine. Carpet bomb and heavy artillery barrages of all population centers. This would accomplish #2, but would completely negate #3. They could simply say, "oops, our bad," and withdraw all forces and keep #3. It's possible but not particularly likely that the Finnish and Georgian requests to join NATO and the EU respectively would stall and fizzle out. Perhaps most importantly... there's no outcome that doesn't make Putin look like a fool. He looks like an idiot in every conceivable outcome. The only situation in which Putin does not look like an absolute dunce is if they do Holodomor 2.0 and and scorch the earth of Ukraine, completely alienate themselves from almost the entire Earth, and simply submit themselves to being a ring bearer to China. Putin still looks like a fool in the history books, but until he dies 5-20 years from now he can continue to pretend to be a strongman. Maybe that's good enough for him, I dunno. They keep the seat on the security council though.