@nuke terrorist was saying there that he's struggling to believe any of it, and I'm in the same mindset. It's unbelievably awful, and pointless. At this point I don't even think the Russians are guaranteed to win anything here. It could not have gone worse for them. Before any of this kicked off I was listening to Ukrainians getting interviewed. The main thing was they didn't believe this would happen, when pressed they said they'd fight but conceded they didn't have a chance if the Russians got rolling.
I think the ineptitude of the russian military, despite its supposed modernisation, is the biggest surprise for a lot of people coming out of this. And that will have a long term effect both within and without russia.
Forgetting the strategic blunder of doing anything more than simply roll into donetsk and luhansk and declare them part of the russian federation, this shows the rest of the world that russia performs poorly against a well prepared modern army.
not in the scale of losses (so far), but there's a touch of 1905, where the japanese handed them their arses both in land and sea battles. they had poured a fortune into developing a modern navy, but were incredibly poorly prepared and led.