What do you mean by even if? Where did I say “therefore the invasion of Ukraine cannot be a failure” or “therefore Russia’s capitalist government will do the best for their people in the long term”? Again, what’s up with all this X and Y cannot be true at the same time.

Got it.

You say there is a NATO border incoming. Is this a win for the world population, to be closer to a nuclear war? When two blocks of oligarchies exchange punches, I would say one misses the point when they cheer on the blue-yellow one.

For the world population, maybe. There’s an argument to be made that a weaker militarily and economically Russia is less likely to decide to throw punches and the punches would be weaker. That might be good for the rest of us people of the world. I simply can’t see any stability emerging from the status quo in Russia in the medium term and so I see it as needing mitigation. The economic development didn’t manage to put enough money and control in the hands of average Russians who could tame punch throwing impulses. 😐 The average Russians will be paying either way.

There’s a lot of maybes and mights in there. That’s just my view. That said, a whole lot of Europe was a lot more positively inclined towards Russia before the war.

Could easily argue that the winner of the Cold War was the US, considering the USSR collapsed through internal strife and balkanization.