Just for context, America lost about 58,000 soldiers in 10-12 years in Vietnam, and about 4000 on 20 years in Afghanistan.

Putin has lost 1.3 MILLION+ soldiers in a only 2-3 years. He's gone from a voluntary military, to a draft, to commuting prison sentences, to literally snatching military age males off the streets, to hiring mercenaries. He's quickly running out options for his war machine.

Their sources likely count differently. Dead only, vs. dead + wounded.

I also fear that he could possibly use something worse just to win.

I think/hope he knows that if he uses nukes on Ukraine the entire rest of the world will unite against him faster than you can say 'dasvidanya'. Or at least that someone around him understands that...

Or the 90 billion loan just approved, that should give Ukraine a lot of breathing room.

Russia occupies a lot of Ukrainian territory since the start of the three day operation years ago, Ukraine occupies a little of Russia's last time I checked.

I mean i whole heartedly agree that Ukraine should gets its pre 2014 borders back, but lets be realistic here that will not happen in any ceasefire today... in best case case scenario the new borders would be drawn at the current contact lines.

Talk's cheap. Watch his actions.

This, this, this or this?

"Stronger" is stronger than before, not stronger than Russia. Which would be correct multiple times a year over the past 4+ years.

Though at this point it does look like Ukraine is probably the "stronger" of the two. That doesn't mean they are going to use that strength to grind back territory at significant loses. They care about their personnel much more than Russia.

No, Russia isn't going to "run out" of personnel or materials. They are going to see decreased production that cannot match demand, which has already happened with multiple items. For example tanks, they have run out of T72Bs and have to pull the T72As out of long term storage. There are only ~1000 72As but it'll last them maybe a year.

The articles about them producing hundreds of "new" tanks are presenting retrofitted hulls (like the T72A) as "new". In actuality, they only produce a couple dozen modern tanks a year and they mostly hold those in reserve.

For manpower, they can crypto-mobilize "small" numbers of personnel a month, but they can't mobilize the masses without creating unrest which would likely overthrow Putin (which is why they've only had the 1 mobilization early in the war). The crypto-mobilization has been able to exceed loses for most of the war. The last 5? months though, the loses exceed the number of new recruits.

Fossil Fuel sales fund a large amount of the Russian federal government budget. Even with the huge spike in oil prices due to the Iran war, Ukraine's "kinetic" sanctions has seen Russia only be able to take advantage of a small amount of the windfall. They have reduced their exports to keep their population happy, which reduces their overall operating budget. Their budget has already peaked and is set to decrease each year for the next few years (in the middle of a war), because Russia's economy can't handle it.

Those "forever wars" you mention are not continuous kinetic wars, so I'm not sure they apply in this situation.

I agree when the end of the war comes is a political question, but each day brings Russia closer to the point where they are fed up with the war and want it to end by Ukrainian acceptable standards. Putin is unlikely to every give up, but if he ceases to exist, I expect Russian negotiations won't be far behind.