Some columns ago, Snarky described how Donald Trump was wrong when he supposedly said Vladimir Putin was brilliant.
If you will recall, Russia sent troops in school buses into a particular part of Ukraine. That part is called the Donbas, it is a heavily industrialized area that makes big stuff, like tanks.
Russia was running out of spare parts for its tanks left over from the breakup of the Soviet Union and discovered they were all made in the Donbas.
What to do? Why naturally. you march in and take it. They did not get all of it, so, Putin decided in 2022, to take all of Ukraine. That has not gone according to plan.
Let's look at this situation, you grab a part of a country that builds things that in modern warfare are dinosaurs. You now have a bunch of machinists with nothing to do.
You have shown the world what a paper tiger you really are. You have driven even Sweden and Finland into an alliance with the rest of western Europe. You are wiping out a generation of your own male population.
Invading the Donbas is like invading America across Lake Erie with the goal of taking Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nobody in their right mind would do that.
