Major wars move through predictable phases, but it's hard to recognize them in the day to day minutiae while you're in them. It's only later that historians writing Wikipedia pages can properly couch the significance of this and that event, what the outcomes REALLY meant, and what they said about the final direction of travel for the conflict.
The Conflict Starts- the players decide what their strategic objectives are. They like their plans, whether it's on attack or defence, they like it enough to proceed. Attack? Fight? Flee? Brief or Long? How long can we stick to this phase? Everyone is pretty confident that they can or must prevail during Phase 1.
The Adjustments - Unless the outcome is quick, clear and decisive and the defending regime decides to flee or the agressor pulls back, Adjustments need to be made. This phase is strongly influenced by the respective sides' allies - how much, what kind and how long will support be counted on to continue? Tactical leaders will be replaced/scapegoated for failures, and Strategic ones may be changed out. Like when Westmoreland is replaced in Vietnam, McLelland in the U.S. Civil War, MacArthur in the Korean War. In Ukraine, this refers to when Zaluzhnyi and Shoigu step aside, and new leaders are brought in promising bold new ways of thinking. The political leadership doesn't change at this point, as they're pot committed to their original objectives. They're convinced, or tell themselves at least, that The Adjustments will salvage their original goals. How much they believe it is irrelevant - it just happens and tends to extend the war for both. These new commanders will get 2-3 years of leash - one year to change things, one year to assess the impact of those changes, and one year to explain their failures. If you have to change the overall leader again at this point - you're probably losing.
The Signal & The Lies - All possible adjustments have been made, and their impacts assessed. The parties are doing all they can. This is where The Leader tends to step in and take more personal control over battlefield decisions. Which almost never works and is immediately resented by miliary leadership. Firings accelerate, factions emerge, plots and coups start to germinate. The professional army is mostly spent, and the quality of The Average Fighting Man is in decline - but technology starts to advance more rapidly on both sides. Anything that actually works is quickly copied by the other side - Poison Gas, Tanks & Tactical Artillery in WW1, Aircraft Carriers & Air Power in WW2, Infantry ATGMs, SAMs & MANPADs over armor & aircraft during the various conflicts of the Cold War. This war's evolution is tactical battlefield coordination, scaled A.I. analysis/targeting & especially cost-effective Drones of every kind.
The eventual outcome of the war becomes pretty clear, but hubris & sunk cost sustains the killing. The Lying starts. To themsleves, to their armies, to their industries, to their bureaucrats, to the public. The realities of the conflict cut through regime propaganda - this is where rational actors taper off their goals and look for a settlement. Shortages of every kind reveal themselves - men, materiel, money, air & artillery support, fuel, food, ammo - there's not enough of anything. Lines remain frozen - because these societies can still give and take a punch - they both lack the incremental superiority over the other side that makes the others' position hopeless. In the Azeri-Armenia war, the difference was drones. Azeris were a 21st century army with drones, and Armenia was a 20th century army without them. Or without good allies either. They had no choice, and had to capitulate. The Ukraine war has no capability-imbalance at this point. Talk of peace begins -the settlement demands are still publicly unrealistic, but behind closed doors, the regimes want to surivive and talk more pragmatically. This is where the Iran-Iraq war ended, for example. We're here now with the Ukraine war. Or maybe just slightly past it. Even the Japanese in WW2 soooooort of stopped here, or slightly over into the next, optional phase.
The Madness - Irrational actors who are overinvested in the outcomes keep fighting long after the outcome is obvious. Military and domestic realities are ignored - whether it's on the offensive or defensive. It was well understood by 1943 that Germany would lose. More recently- like the Tamil Tigers fighting until their top leadership is literally eliminated in Sri Lanka. Like Gaddhafi, Ceaucescu, Hitler, Saddam, Assad - the leadership is not ever going to accept military defeat or disgrace. The conflict lasts until the leader is gone. Usually dead.
That's probably where we're at with Putin. There is absolutely no way he achieves his strategic goals of reconquering Ukraine and establishing it as a permanent colony. Zero chance. Regardless of how it happens, naturally or otherwise, this war lasts as long as he does, unfortunately.
Putin is an overpromoted gangster ghoul bully in the twilight of his life. There is no Ideological Spy -> Vengeful Tsar -> Glorious Restorer third act for him. Nothing that happens on any front in Ukraine is going to sway Putin to reasonableness. Forget Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporhizia - the realities of those places doesn't matter at all. The only front that can sway him is The Russian Front. Shortages of Gas, Manpower and economic collapse are the only thing that can force his hand. Ukraine would be wise to continue their current strategy to erode the Russian home front.
The Russian population in 2026 is NOT the same meek, uninformed serf-slave workforce of WW2 that can reolcate it's entire industrial base to the Urals to avoid invading Nazis. They won't work 24 hour industrial factory shifts, sustained by grim pots of rotten potatotes and sour cabbage, making low tech weapons tirelessly with a political commissar's pistol in their back. They can't even tolerate cancelling Crimean vacation plans and gas shortages.
Ukraine seems to realize this. They aren't close to cracking. But the russian population is. Once consumer spending and industry collapse, and in particular - when even the military can't or won't gather the resources requried to mush forward into an explosive death - then and ONLY then will The Madness end.
What do you think? Let's have a chin wag.
This is very simple, there is no war machine for a massive (de)mechanized ground war if you lose the air defense war.
Airpower cannot exert political power, but it is maximally effective at dismantling the means for industrial scale war.
Russia can call up all the untrained grunts they want, Putin can delude himself to the last minute, it does not change this calculus.
Veteran air defense crews and sophisticated air defense equipment don't grow on trees...
EX-FUCKING-ZACTLY. Thank you.
Airpower has hard limits, as the U.S. just recently found...again...in Iran. You need effective boots on the ground to move the needle. Even the massive, sustained, years-long Strategic Bombing campaign in WW2 required sending in massed ground forces right into the center of Berlin to end the European portion of the war. No air campaign has ever by itself achieved strategic political objectives in history.
And the air war that Russia is using for stand off terror attacks is INCREDIBLY resource intensive. It's costing Russia billions to kill a handful of innocent people every day. Those assets, including the crews, are expesnive and the aircraft are essentially irreplaceable, with finite lifespans before you consider losses.
Russia essentially has a three part strategy at this point:
Push small infiltration teams into soft areas. Hope they live long enough to encourage organized resistance to fall back to the next line of defense.
Stand off terror bombing.
Keep doing 1 & 2 until they give you something to make it stop.
The problem with #1 is that your policy is Infestation. But - like bugs, mice or rats, you can kill them now, soon or later. But eventually, you can get them all with enough Repellent & Traps. In this case, drone saturation.
The problem with #2 is like you said - it does not achieve a political objective
#3 only works if #1 does, and #1 only works if Ukraine agrees to stop killing your forward forces. Just ask the U.S. how vietnam went. They could engage enemy forces and eventually win battles - but then your occupying forces get sniped, bombed, shelled, droned, counter attacked. Eventually you realize that the cost of holding land is untenable - you can't pacify the ground, so you eventually choose to leave. What "works" for infiltration is not the same strategy that works for occupation. If the Ukrainians never stop bleeding the Russians, then the entire point of occypying and exploiting economic activity on the stolen ground never materializes. And they have to leave.
This is the recurring argument I have with people online who say "UKRAINE CAN'T RETAKE CRIMEA". They don't have to. They just have to make the Russians leave. If Crimea has no food, no fuel, no water, it is a barren rock outcrop that is bloody well uninhabitable. A tragedy, but - in the interim, it is also a buffer zone between Ukraine and Russia. When Russia either grows up or collapses, then maybe a peaceful existence becomes possible. Seems insane, but - time is a funny thing. The Germans and Japanese were certainly rehabilitated as global community members, but only after their malignant political class was deconstructed.
This war is existential for Ukraine, and no serious minded person expects the russians to honor any peace agreement long term. Russia gave Ukraine no choice - Death, Enslavement or Fight. If Russia stops fighting, there is still a Russia. Probably. If Ukraine stops fighting, there is no Ukraine. Not as a country, not as a culture, not as a people. Bleeding the Russian army until there is fundamental change in the political leadership or structure of the Russian Federation is probably the ONLY way for Ukraine to secure a lasting peace.