The War in Ukraine and the Saudi intervention in Yemen are basically the same conflict

[Ginvincible]

I personally see a parallel between the Saudi intervention in Yemen and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Of course, the Saudi's aren't there to explicitly annex the region like the Russians are doing in Ukraine, but there are a lot of similarities in their overall aims.

The Saudi's invaded Yemen after the Houthis, a popular majority (really just northern Yemen?) population, rebelled and overthrew an unpopular government. The opening passage on the wiki article about this is literally,

Saudi-backed Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, running unopposed as the only candidate for president, won the 2012 Yemeni elections.[94] Since August 2014, the Houthis (or Ansar Allah), a Zaidi Shia movement and militant group backed by Iran, dissatisfied with Hadi government's decisions and the new constitution, arranged mass protests which culminated into their takeover of the Yemeni government in 2015, declaring victory of the revolution and drafting a new constitution when the term of Hadi's provisional government had already expired. Saudi Arabia and other countries denounced this as an unconstitutional coup d'état

doesn't this sound familiar to the 2014 Ukrainian ousting and subsequent events? At least when I speak to a good Saudi friend of mine he emphasizes that the intervention in Yemen was "called for by the legitimate head of state" of Yemen and had some UN backing. But Yanukovych (the ousted Ukrainian president) also called his removal a coup (actual legality of his removal is murky to this day) and sought foreign aid to restore his administration. I guess there wasn't a UN resolution and Yanukovych didn't remain in the spotlight for long after he fled Ukraine.

Back to Yemen..
The Saudis then invaded to re-install their their own guy. Despite having an overwhelming advantage on paper, their offensives stalled out and the Houthis even start sending drones and missile strikes into Saudi Arabia. This is largely credited to outside powers (Iran and Syria) aiding the Houthis and keeping them afloat.

Does this situation sound familiar? If not it should.

Some might claim that the similarities are only skin deep but I disagree. Saudi Arabia basically has the same objectives and is using the same tactics as Russia. They have less capabilities and less claim to the region, but the end result is the same. Likewise, the support given to the Houthis by Iran pales in scope to that of the support given to Ukraine by NATO.

I have to wonder, if Russia had killed Zelensky early on, would Ukraine have fallen into warring factions? Would the Azov battalion have turned into an eastern European Al-Qaeda? Maybe anti-Russian factions would have splintered like the Yemeni government factions did? Hard to predict.

I'm not sure what my question to the experts is other than, what am I missing from my very general analysis?

 

[jetray]

I have to wonder, if Russia had killed Zelensky early on, would

probably they dint want to make a martyr out of him. They even exchanged azov members who were captured during mariopol siege, probably russians have no idea where this would lead to.

 

[Ginvincible]

probably they dint want to make a martyr out of him. They even exchanged azov members who were captured during mariopol siege, probably russians have no idea where this would lead to.

in other reality the Russians would have intiated the conflict more competantly. In that reality the parallels between the Saudi and Russian invasions are more limited..