From the beginning, Western military analysts and the press have consistently been wrong about Putin’s objectives. He doesn’t want to subjugate Ukraine. Putin wants to capture and control Russian speaking areas, and the Black Sea areas that he controls now. His secondary objective was to create a costly humanitarian crisis to bleed NATO’s resources. Related to that, he wanted the Ukrainian population to suffer so that the grassroots political resolve to join NATO would be weakened. He has met his objectives.

For those who have forgotten their history, Russia used to control Ukraine. They allowed it to go its own way in 1992, because keeping it cost the Russian people more than they recouped in tax dollars. The collapse of the Soviet bloc, and then the Soviet union, was largely due to the fact that the empire cost them too much to control. They don’t want Ukraine back. They want the Russian speaking areas back. They want the revenue from all of the improvements they made to the Sochi Olympic area and they want a seaport into the Black Sea. Now they have what they want.

Further the ongoing war is costing the west much more than it’s costing Russia, so they will continue to fight the war and drain Western resources and weaken NATO. eventually NATO will run out of Ukrainians willing to die, and they will find some face saving way to make peace. In the meantime, America has another war (we’re pretty much always at war), and arms dealers get to make huge profits.