It isn't an incredibly military feat to march a few hundred miles from occupied territory into a nation with 1/10th of your GDP and a week later sort of control one city at the cost of thousands of your solders and hundreds of vehicles with no air definitive air superiority, shrinking supply of munitions, factories reliant on foreign parts that will soon grind to a halt, market heading toward freefall and a geopolitical position so bad that the only thing keeping the rest of the world from absolutely murdering them is a threat to murder the world combined with a reputation so degenerate that people believe they are apt to do it.
It is a humiliating defeat because it indicates that the cost of pacification would be outright horrifying. Full control might well cost a 5 figure death toll and could approach the Russian GDP and this indeed buys you what? The privilege of getting to literally square one in Afghanistan 2.0.
It is a humiliating defeat because it indicates that the cost of pacification would be outright horrifying. Full control might well cost a 5 figure death toll and could approach the Russian GDP and this indeed buys you what? The privilege of getting to literally square one in Afghanistan 2.0.