Back in November 1989, as East Germany decided it wasn't worth the bother to enforce crossing restrictions at the Berlin Wall, everyone immediately pegged that as the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and -- inevitably -- "victory" of the West in the Cold War over the East. Even at that time, I had a great deal of difficulty processing it as a "win" by the West. Instead, I view the circumstance as one in which the Soviet Union merely lost first by bankrupting itself by redirecting too many resources into military gear and not enough into keeping bread and shoes on the shelves for average citizens.
In March of 2022, there is talk about how Ukraine is actually winning the war against Russia There are actually some legitimate points supporting that argument but it's hard to view them as a win when over ten million Ukrainians have been forced to relocate (3.5 million outside the country, another 6.5 million within) and uncounted millions of homes, schools, hospitals, etc. have been destroyed preventing ANY instant return to physical normalcy even if Putin conceded and yanked his troops out immediately.
There's no guarantee events will continue unfolding in this direction or if Putin will escalate in new military directions or in cyber directions as hinted at as of 3/21/2022. Here are some of the points being made for Ukraine being on the winning side so far, per a writer in The Atlantic here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/ukraine-is-winning-war-russia/627121/- Russia has committed fifty percent of its troops to this effort
- they are close to having lost between 10-15 percent of those troops (dead, wounded, deserted)
- Russia seems unable to protect its electronic communications in the field, allowing Ukraine forces to find / kill them
- there is nearly a 1:1 ratio between equipment destroyed and equipment captured or found abandoned which indicates many of the Russian troops have no will to fight
- the US has good intelligence on Russian plans and it appears we ARE sharing it with Ukraine
- Russia doesn't have a well-funded reserve army force like the US - what we see now is pretty much all Putin has
Another point made in an online video (sorry, didn't save the URL and couldn't find it) was that maps depicting the progress of Russian troops through Ukraine are misleading because there is a difference between merely TRAVERSING territory and CONTROLLING territory. As a more simple analogy atop American geography, imagine an enemy force entering the US in New Orleans then traveling west to attack El Paso, Texas. Assuming that happened, there is a VAST difference between saying that enemy is now simply inflicting pain on El Paso versus saying that enemy CONTROLS all of the territory from New Orleans to El Paso -- the entire state of Texas. Putin has launched campaigns against several major cities in Ukraine and troops have moved a great distance but that doesn't mean they've held control of all of the territory between their point of entry at the border and the target. They don't have the troops, equipment or supply chain to do it.
It's still way to early to predict how the war will end but at a minimum it's obvious the physical damage to the infrastructure of Ukraine will require a mini-Marshall Plan to rebuild. Of course, we won't know WHERE to rebuild until the war reaches a conclusion. If Putin remains on the attack, he may "win" the territory but he will inherit control over a bombed-out wasteland with probably 25-30 percent of the population gone, leaving him no productive work force or productive economic engine to incorporate back into his kleptocracy. (And oh yea, Putin will regain control of all of the costs and headaches of Chernobyl…) If that's the way this ends, that mini-Marshall Plan will need to provide funding to all of the neighboring countries to compensate them for absorbing the mass exodus of refugees into their countries and building the housing and amenities needed for 10+ million people.
WTH
