But what does he gain by capturing Ukraine? Still don’t see the benefit.
It's face value. Imagine an Ukraine in NATO and EU becoming more prosperous than Russia.
It would be a wake-up call for it's citizens at the way their country was governed all this years.
For this fact they can't allow it to happen.
And make no mistake, without NATO, the baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, probably Finland would be next in line to adhere to putin's new euroasiatic empire, or New USSR.
For example, in our case Romania adhered to the EU back in 2007, and by now we have a bigger Income per person than Russia.
A country with 18 million people vs a country with 140 million and with natural resources as Russia, managed properly should be at least in sight of Germany, economic wise.
And by the way my corupt country only managed to attract 30% of the funds the EU potentially provided.
At 100% we would make fun of the poor Russians( no disrespect intended).
I also want to applaud those in Russia that took to the streets today and those that have/had a strong position against this meaningless war, our modern day heroes.
As for the Ukrainians stay safe, stay strong and hopefully this will soon be over one way or the other.
The lesser the number of casualties, the better.
As for what will happen after, putin's is going to overthrow the pro west government and install his own puppet government in Ukraine and after a while he is going to withdraw his troops when his government manages to grow his roots in Ukraine.. Unfortunately Ukraine isn't going to be free for the foreseeable future, with the Russian army always in the background if the Ukrainians don't stay the course.