Good piece Scott. Thanks.

The problem with (us) armchair generals is that we define "success" on our own terms. No one (except a few select insiders I assume) really knows how the Kremlin defines success in this mess and no one is asking Putin.

Crazy Vlad he may be, but no nuclear nation with a million man army goes to war on the whims of ONE man no matter how dictatorial the regime is. The fact that we are unable to fathom their motives does not mean their motives are what we assign to them.

(In psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances”)

Win, lose or draw though Putin has made sure that Russia's fossil fuels will no longer be available to the West and a Russian/Chinese (and BRICS) alliance is inevitable.