It's hard to say. For example, when the new secular Afghan government called the USSR to come "help them" with the local population, the USA and Saudis secretly

It's hard to say. For example, when the new secular Afghan government called the USSR to come "help them" with the local population, the USA and Saudis secretly funded and trained local fighters (Mujahideen) as local resistance, as well as encouraging foreign fighters (Afghan Arabs) to travel and also attack with Stinger Missiles and RPGs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_equipment_used_by_mujahideen_during_Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_equipment_use... But also blowing up things up to and including civilian infrastructure. Lots of bridges, etc. were attacked for years. This is a guerilla insurgency. Wikipedia says: They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, knocking out bridges, closing major roads, attacking convoys, disrupting the electric power system and industrial production, and attacking police stations and Soviet military installations and air bases. They assassinated government officials and PDPA members, and laid siege to small rural outposts. In March 1982, a bomb exploded at the Ministry of Education, damaging several buildings. In the same month, a widespread power failure darkened Kabul when a pylon on the transmission line from the Naghlu power station was blown up. In June 1982 a column of about 1,000 young communist party members sent out to work in the Panjshir valley were ambushed within 30 km of Kabul, with heavy loss of life. On 4 September 1985, insurgents shot down a domestic Bakhtar Airlines plane as it took off from Kandahar airport, killing all 52 people aboard. So even if USSR "won", or supported the local secular government, they'd get attacked, similar to how the Taliban would fight the USA in the last 20 years and eventually make our army leave too (this year). The USA used this force to, in the words of Brezhinski, national security advisor "make the soviets bleed for as much and as long as possible": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0 Unfortunately, the longer a protracted proxy war like this goes on, the more civilians are killed. After the Soviets "won" in Afghanistan, the ensuing proxy war claimed the lives of 2 million Afghan civilians! https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War In Ukraine, the CIA thought Russia would quickly make the government in Kyiv capitulate and agree to Putin's demands, so they started training Ukrainian paramilitaries to do the work of Mujahideen, here is an article in Yahoo News about that from before Feb 24: https://news.yahoo.com/cia-trained-ukrainian-paramilitaries-may-take-central-role-if-russia-invades-185258008.html https://news.yahoo.com/cia-trained-ukrainian-paramilitaries-...