memes

I think the analogy with Afghanistan is quite superficial. Once you look past the surface level similarities you realize why the two conflicts are playing out and will continue to play out very differently.

For one thing, their geography is extremely different. Ukraine's flat open geography is not conducive to waging guerilla insurgency, with the exception of the far west of Ukraine which is more forested and mountainous but which Russia shows no intention of wanting to have anything to do with.

Second is that the social structures are very different. Afghanistan had and has a very tribal society. Ukraine is essentially a Western style society where people are very alienated. Religion does not play anywhere near as big a role in their lives. And while Banderite ideology is enough to motivate the extremists, it is not sufficient to bind society together in the same way that religious and tribal community does.

Then there's the fact that Russians and Ukrainians are nearly indistinguishable from each other. The main signifier of Ukrainian identity nowadays is being anti-Russia. But a significant part of the Ukrainian population is just not that anti-Russia. Pro-Russian sentiment is of course harshly suppressed and many of the most pro-Russian Ukrainians left, but still most Ukrainians speak Russian and share a religion with the Russians.

It will be hard for guerillas to hide and move among the people when they never know who might be sympathetic to the Russians. Having a local population that is mostly sympathetic to your struggle is essential to a successful insurgency. It is especially hard when the enemy is not easily linguistically, culturally or physically distinguishable.

And finally, Afghanistan had and continues to have very youth skewed population. Ukraine's demographics on the other hand are a disaster. There are hardly any young people left, and the waging of a conventional war of attrition is further hollowing out those demographics, killing or crippling a large number of exactly that demographic which would be most suited to wage any kind of insurgency.

Why have we seen no pro-Ukrainian partisan movement of any significance in the new Russian oblasts? There have been very few successful acts of sabotage and assassination there, in fact there have been more of these in Russia proper than in the Donbass/Novorossiya regions. This also applies in the other direction. The pro-Russian partisan movement in Ukraine is also nearly non-existent, not because there are no pro-Russians there but because they have the same problems i outlined above.