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The plan certainly was to create another Soviet-Afghanistan war in hopes to cut Russia "down to size". Geopolitics.

Whether that works time will tell.

What is certain however, is the number of the dead and the destruction of Ukraine.

I don't think that was the plan at any point. That's just what happened. The politicians in the west wanted things to go back to how they were before the war and never wanted to give enough aid to jeopardize that. Though that has long been impossible they still don't appear to have a coherent idea of what they want after the war. Even if it was unrealistic, it would at least form the basis of a plan, how best to aid Ukraine and what to negotiate.

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