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Notes -
On its face, and from my comfy armchair, consuming my western news, the invasion of Ukraine seems like such a colossal waste of human lives and military power.
When I think about other recent conflicts, the ones that come to mind were also incredibly wasteful, but they make sense to me in a way that the Ukraine war does not (maybe because I'm not russian?). The recent examples that come to mind are the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the American defense of South Vietnam. These were arguably also very wasteful but maybe not on the scale of the Ukraine war. Are these good analogies for the war in Ukraine?
My initial ideas relate to the idea that Russia had a lot of military power that was sitting around unused and a bunch of petro income that made any sanctions less meaningful. Maybe the invasion/war hasn't actually been costly? Perhaps Russian leaders (and the hawks among them) saw nationalist fracturing of the tech supply chain coming anyways and this just accelerates it?
What does Russia get for the tremendous expenditure of resources in the invasion and following conflict? Is there some piece of context that helps the invasion make sense to a westerner?
Obviously they have little to show for it now. Because they failed at the blitzkrieg. They were never supposed to expend this many resources - just as they didn't in Crimea 8 years ago. We would be in a different world if they hadn't. Just as Iraq wouldn't look so inexplicably silly if Cheney and co. really had been able to make it into a functioning democracy.
As for what Russia wanted, it's still unclear how maximalist their goals were but there are some solid potential benefits Putin was looking at :
Annexing eastern Ukraine and gaining a land bridge to Crimea - which is currently being served by a bridge that - as this war has proven - can be disabled, creating problems for supplying Putin's "big win". The first part of this we can be relatively confident of cause Naryshkin accidentally spilled the plan when Putin was hammering him
Placing a puppet on a diminished Ukraine's throne to prevent or rollback any flirting with the EU and NATO.
Russia is facing demographic and imperial decline. Russian Ukrainians would - if assimilated - be a boon and keeping Ukraine (the second largest post-Soviet state) onside are more than reasonable goals.
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