We, the People

 What we observe in Afghanistan now, that was Kremlin's expectation for Ukraine in 2014. And they were right about the army, Ukrainian military was almost nonexistent back then. They were right about law enforcement, its personnel en masse fled or committed treason. They were right about state in general, state apparatus was in full disarray after Yanukovych regime collapsed. They were wrong in only one thing, and this was their undoing. The People. Ukrainians.

The Kremlin's grand geopolitical design of Novorossia, the rapid offensive of their proxy forces from Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the capture of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odessa regions, providing land access to the already occupied Crimea and the occupied Transnistria in Moldova, all these grandiose dreams of the Muscovite führer, that should have consolidated his legacy as an imperial 'collector of lands' - all this was crushed by Ukrainian people.

Advancing Russian proxies pushed the same narrative as the Taliban. "We are liberators. We come to free you from this decadent puppets of the Western countries in your capital and to bring you to the true light" (only this 'true light' was not the Islamic fundamentalism but Russian imperialism in this case).

But all these pro-Russian forces were fought back by common Ukrainians. By Citizens. By Volunteers. They gave the state precious time to regain itself. And the 'great design' of the Kremlin collapsed. We would fully free from their mercenaries Donetsk and Luhansk regions as well if not the intervention of the Russian regular army.

So this is the difference. People.