In Ukraine in Feb 2022 Ukraine had a NATO trained and armed army of 680,000 troops, and Russia had next to Ukraine an army of between 160,000 and 170,000 troops. An ex CIA officer (Larry Johnson IIRC) stated the CIA estimated if the Russian forces moved in it would be eliminated within 45 days. I'm not sure why that didn't go as planned because the Ukrainian troops have shown courage and initiative, and the weapons have been allegedly equal to the Russian weapons, which it is claimed were outdated. I can only ask how things are going so far and if the US and the rest of NATO should continue the war?
There has been a claim made that if we don't stop Russia in Ukraine then they will go all the way to Berlin or to France. I don't know what evidence there is for that, though I'm pretty sure if Russia doesn't want NATO on their border with Ukraine then they don't want in on their border with the Balkan states either, or with Georgia. It is interesting that Pres. Putin for the first 22 years as President was mainly involved in improvements inside Russia and has only more recently become involved in giving warnings about encroachment next to the Russian border. And has repeatedly offered terms of negotiation and reached a proposed agreement with Ukraine on Apr 1 2022 in Turkey. I can't see any evidence of the 'Napoleon syndrome' so many are banding around.
The actual objective as stated by both NATO and the State Department was to 'bleed Russia white'. quotations on that are getting hard to find. There had to be an aim other than just having a war in Ukraine, and that was to weaken Russia, destroy Putin's reputation, produce regime change, and gain free trade with Russia. Here is an article that the war is successfully weakening Russia: The Moscow Times has been located in Amsterdam since 2022
Nope! UKRAINE is achieving our objectives. We will remain deep in their debt for decades. You are confused. The US and the rest of NATO are not at war. And we can also thank Ukraine for that.
I would say initially yes. The purpose of the war (from the American perspective) was to keep the war going to ensnare Russia in a quagmire and degrade the Russian military and weaken Russia. That seemed to be the case for the first part of the war but seems to be not as much of the case now. Russia has been rebuilding it's military and has established links with suppliers. I suppose you could argue the war is still a quagmire but I think that's more the case for Ukraine and not Russia.
The war is taking resources and labor away in Russia that would otherwise be improving the country, so it is succeeding even though we aren't winning. The same as US sanctions harm Cuba and lots of other countries our leaders regard as being competitors.