Listened to a podcast recently about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Nothing has changed with the Red Army. They threw infantry into a meat grinder without pause, carpet bombed the country with artillery, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians without care, atrocities, soldiers fragging, etc. Same with Chechnya. It's in their DNA, they can never be allowed back in the global community without some catyclismic change within Russia.
What was interesting is how the war ended. Gorbachev opened up the news to allow Soviets to read about what was actually happening. The mothers of those killed went apeshit vocally and the pressue internally became too much to continue. The number of those killed? 15,000 over 8 years.
We are now at what, 10x that in Ukraine in 2? I understand Putin has locked down dissent, and he's the polar opposite of Gorbachev, but that kill rate cannot be sustainable for Russia without some serious internal blowback that affects this war continuing as is.