Hard to say what Russia’s true aim was at the start. Maybe just a puppet regime. Maybe they still eventually succeed in assassinating Zelensky. Though if that was their only aim, surely they could have done that without staging a full invasion. But the same could be said for us with Iraq. We didn’t have to go there just to get saddam. We could have sent a drone and done it immediately. It’s always about the economics. Ukraine has a lot of food and oil. Iraq had a lot of oil. Afghanistan a lot of opium. And of course the wealth gained from those assets makes you even stronger.

I guess I would say that Russia holding any land at all would be a “win”. But the question is how long will they hold areas they‘ve taken. And if in the long run they leave like we did, then it’s not a win, no matter how much they hold today.

No foreign power has ever successfully occupied Afghanistan afaik. The Chinese will be the next to try due to insane mineral wealth but it's going to be hard to extract and process the ore.

The West did topple Saddam fairly easily but it's important to remember that "Iraq" as we know it is an historical fiction invented by the British and composed of various different peoples with little in common. The Shiites identify with Iran, the Sunnis with the Sauds, then you've got various other peoples. Iran probably benefitted the most of anyone from Saddam's removal because he loved killing Iranians. The Kurds benefitted. Any benefit to Western states was clearly outweighed by the extraordinary cost involved.