I never said the neocons were competent. They assumed crippling sanctions plus a protracted war in Ukraine would destabilize Russia and result in putins overthrow or assasination. Obviously that hasnt occured, and sanctions havent done much to weaken putin, and probably backfired spectacularly by convincing much of the world to beging ditching the US dollar as the words reserve currency.

Both sides miscalculated. Putin thought he could just waltz into ukraine with few troops and use pro russian sentiment in much of the country to oust the Zelensky mafia with little bloodshed, but he didnt understand the depth of us involvement. The cia had been preparing for an invasion and zelensky had a list of russia sympathetic ukrainians, and these networks were wiped out as soon as the invasion began, leaving ukrainians forced to fight and die for his regime or face retaliation from his us armed and supported thugs.