Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Russia get bogged down in tiny Chechnya

[Quixote1818]

for years? If they had that much trouble in Chechnya seems like Ukraine could be extremely difficult to control. Chechnya has 1 million people. Ukraine has 44 million.

[electricbro45]

1. Times have changed

This was under Boris Yeltsin, not Putin, and during the 90's. Things have changed in the last 3 decades. Yeltsin was a terrible and ineffective leader. He lead Russia straight into the toilet after the USSR collapsed. Here is a reputable link talking about Chechnya and what happened. https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/sep/27/russia.chechnya Yeltsin is a HUGE reason why Russia ended up with Putin. By the way, the high price of fossil fuels really benefited Russia from 9-11 to now because they supply so much of it, thus they have been able to modernize a lot of things, including military. I don't see any good outcome and I truly hope it doesn't really begin WWIII; what we all feared during the Cold War. This is going to be a mess, make no mistake...............

[JI7]

2. That involved Religion/Islam