with no real sense of being a country and little motivation to defend anyone from rival tribes, cost them enough lives to destabilize the USSR. It fell and Ukraine tasted 30 years of relative freedom, building its forces, training its population, and gaining a real sense of itself as a separate country.

Per Wikipedia, the Afghan war lasted 9 years with under 15,000 killed. In the first week of this war, the estimate is that about 5,000 Russian troops have been killed. They are fighting a force with superior training on their home turf and the slaughter is and will continue to be enormous. Russia and the SSRs had no stomach for the Afghan war. I doubt they will buy the propaganda for this one when those bodies start to be shipped home.

Ukraine is not going anywhere. If anything, this is their war for independence, and the Russian bloodletting will continue even as the Russians bomb buildings to rubble. It's just not going to work, not even if the entire Russian army is sent in to guard every single pile of rubble over a meter high. Ukrainians will eventually kick them out.

One hopes Putin will be satisfied with a neutral Ukraine without NATO troops and missiles on his doorstep sooner rather than later. If not, everyone else in Russia and in the Kremlin will lose their appetites for this war quickly. It is not only costing them too much, it is exposing their weaknesses rather badly. I'm hopeing all these factors make it short.