DavidFields

true, but the PR value is off the chart.  No matter how Russia spins this for home consumption - even if they say it was due to issues on the ship itself, it is still a huge blow to any sense of Russia's military superiority. 

This is really good and well worth the hour.  Awesome review in detail of just how badly Putin has trashed the Russian economy.

And now for something completely different: partisans! According to official Ukrainian sources, since the occupation of Melitopol started a month ago, 70 soldiers of the occupying forces were stabbed or shot on patrols. I wouldn't hang to this particular number very much, it might be inflated, but it gives some idea about how nice it would be for the occupying forces, even if they managed to roll all the way to the Polish border. Note that are around Melitopol was taken quite early, territorial forces didn't manage to form up properly there. I'd expect that if Russian take significant ground anywhere now, the stay-behind forces will give them much bigger headache. 
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/04/13/7339369/

Interesting take, Photon. 

^What he said! Having said that, my own CM experience level is very much at the beginner end of the spectrum. I bought all the WWII titles (CM1 on gog.com and CM2 direct from Battlefront) over the course of 2019 but work and parenthood have left me little time for gaming of any description. Wouldn't feel right about buying CMBS until this war is over, but I did pick up CMCW recently to support the team...
And welcome to my fellow newcomers...I've had a lurker account here for a few years but these discussions finally drew me out of the shadows. I meant to start off with a tip of the hat post like this as others have done, but ended up chiming in a few times and it just snowballed from there...apologies for the lack of manners.
I will echo what others have said: This thread has become my go-to source for news and analysis on the current conflict, the variety of experience and expertise here is quite remarkable. @Battlefront.com and @The_Capt have definitely earned all the accolades, along with many of the other contributors.
And of course, a special thanks to @Haiduk and everyone else contributing from Ukraine. Anything I can say in these terrible times would feel utterly inadequate, so I'll leave it at a heartfelt stay safe and stay strong. Hopefully better times are ahead soon...

This failing seems to be par for the course across the board. Is it possible that Russia decided 30 years ago that they needed to keep their Navy afloat and come out with a few new air and ground toys to act like they were a world power? Looking at it from the aspect of they want to be big and tough but know that they aren't ever going to fight a peer to peer conflict because NATO is not going to attack them? Figuring that they had enough quantity of brute force leftovers to handle their wayward colonies like Chechnya? 
It makes sense when you look at their force compositions and equipment. They come out with a fancy new tank and equip a battalion or two of their "elite" formations and everyone else is in old gear. Same with most of their other platforms. The western army's don't have active units running around in M60's, Chieftains and Leopard 1's. We've seen base grade T-72's on up, a virtual smorgasbord of variants throughout the different units. Same with their IFV's. They make enough fancy stuff to point to and say watch out for us but they don't field 4800 up to date MBT's equally spread across their formations. Why? 
If they were truly trying to defend against NATO or planned on attacking any peer country they would have had to have kept their whole first line up to date. They have to know that, again there aren't a lot of secrets as to what is in the ground forces of their adversaries and the capabilities of most of our weapons systems. If the people on this board know the difference between the air defense systems on the Moskva and an Aegis they certainly have to. If they haven't updated those systems in 40 years then they were never seriously planning to defend themselves from us or attack us.  
I know their corruption is systemic and has caused a lot of their problems as well but they couldn't realistically believe that what they have for an army could have challenged NATO or even the US on it's own. That isn't even counting in the air or on the sea. There have been plenty of examples of western warfighting capability over the last 30 years so they can't be in the dark as to just how far below the bar they would be in an armed conflict with the bigger contestants. They just can't be that stupid or uninformed. Call them what you want but I don't believe stupid is accurate. Staggeringly poor gamblers at the moment, yes.
So with the mindset of looking tough mostly for bluff because they knew their economy couldn't support a rival war machine to NATO (they tried that and lost) but having enough to systematically subdue the former regions as needed looks like a possible compromise that could have placed them in this situation. It also falls in line with what others have said about this being Putin's Pearl Harbor moment. Watching Ukraine they knew that they had a quickly closing window of opportunity to act and if they didn't jump now it would be impossible in a couple more years.
Of course as we have seen their assessments and gambles on western support and the fighting spirit of the UA were a little off the mark. I think a lot of that was based on the assumption that the UA hadn't yet developed much from the conflict in 2014 and the same mistake that most of the MSM "experts" and simply looked at the basic math without accounting for all the other factors involved. The assumption of more tanks and airplanes wins.  
You might say, "But, but, what about the Kremlin's rhetoric of how they are defending against an aggressive NATO and will defeat them!" or "Why would they develop the costly technologically advanced weapons systems if they were only going to beat on Georgia?". Well, to keep up the pretense to their people and have pretty toys on May 9th. Seriously, especially in an autocratic regime you have to have an enemy. You need to be the strong guy protecting the poor people of your nation from those foreign devils. The fancy toys inspire confidence in your leadership and make them feel safe, therefore you make them feel safe. Then smash a small state from time to time and make sure you let them know that you barely saved them from ruin at the hands of the Moldovan masses backed by the dastardly British Intelligence.
And all that would make sense as to how we got to where we are today. 
Thoughts?

Indeed, didn't this bulls--t get squashed in the first 100 pages of this thread?  "West is responsible for the war because it made Russia feel sad".  Which is ridiculous, because the only thing keeping the baltic states free is their NATO membership.  What a clown.  Like saying Greece was responsible for Hitler's invasion because it had the temerity to beat the Italian invasion.

If there was point this could have been avoided, it was with truly massive support for the Russian economy immediately after the fall of Soviet union. But everything I have read about it implies that Russia simply didn't have enough rule of law, and technical capacity to absorb a lot more aid in any useful way.  More aid would have just been stolen or wasted. I am almost certain that was never possible for Russia to transition to better government than it got. The Soviet system systematically eliminated decent people from rising to prominence, and the world just didn't get lucky there. Zelensky will have several hundred books written about him, because people like him are not common.

And on the topic of how badly Russia has lost the "big picture".  On all this let's say that Russia somehow manages to defeat Ukraine.  Not some poncy re-definition but actually take the whole country installs a puppet government and holds victory parade in May '23 [aside: the odds of this happening are so extremely low that we are in "alien virus wipes out UA" type scenarios, but let's just play along].  So what?
- Russia gets Ukraine and all its oil, gas and wheat...all of which are a small fraction of what Russia already has, but it is technically in the plus column.  Of course to access all that you need a functioning Ukraine, so who is paying to re-build all the infrastructure the Russians blew up in order to gain all said cool stuff?
- Russian has demonstrated the exact opposite of what they need to the world.  The great Russian bear nearly bled out taking a single country in its near abroad, leaving destroyed and abandoned equipment and bodies all over the place.  It looks weaker than we thought going in even if Ukraine surrenders right now...that part is done.
- Geopolitically it has made its enemies stronger (see above). If someone told me Sweden and Finland were going to be seriously be moving to join NATO six months ago, I would have laughed them out of the room.  Hell, we heard rumours of this 6 weeks ago and were not really thinking they were serious.  So NATO is bigger, more unified and better funded - really not seeing the master plan here.
- Geopolitically, it makes Russia much weaker.  Those sanctions are not going to be forgotten in a year. In fact I doubt the investigation into the mass war crimes from this war will be over in a year.  You wanna talk stalemate, no western politician is going to even hint at "re-normalization with Russia" for maybe a decade. So that means that Russia has to pivot heavily to people who will trade with them...enter the Chinese.  The Chinese may very well send Russia support but it is a poison pill.  China wants Russian resources...cheap.  And a weakened Russia who can only trade with a narrow market is extremely vulnerable and desperate.  They will have to live with what they can get from China price-wise because they literally have no other options than "leave it in the ground and become a third world nation".  And even if it isn't China, it will be India then who sets the conditions but that gets more complicated. 
- Internally it makes Russia much weaker.  Putin is going to have to spend billions on the wave of resentment and pushback that is likely coming his way from all the Russians that do not buy off on this whole thing, and even if that is only 17 percent that is 24+ million people that are going to be extremely agitated that Putin has to deal with.  Being an autocrat and creating a closed society takes money, ask North Korea.  So all that funding to counter backlash is going away from "other things", but you cannot simply cut all social programs and infrastructure funding, or that percentage goes up.  So what takes the hit?  The Russian military is the most likely candidate.  Everything but internal security will be on shaky ground, while being run by a corrupt administration.
So here I do agree with Steve, Russia has already lost this war.  It is just a matter of determining what that loss looks like.  Worse, Russia has likely already lost its next war and does not even know it yet.

Gents any chance of keeping the thread on track?
Ukraine...

Interesting piece on the BBC just now about the Russian Orthodox Church backing Putin's invasion as a holy war.  Not that old horse manure again?

The reason why I am emphasizing how their rhetoric and propaganda impacts their decision making is that most analysts have assumed it was just packaged koolaid for the Russian population/foreign consumption and Putin isn't actually a believer.
If the man is truly dying, or aware of his own mortality, if he truly believes in the Russian imperial project, he indeed needs to strike now, before Ukraine gets stronger, and not merely continue the chunk biting previously. Chunk biting won't secure his legacy.
Something else to emphasize, Russian imperialist rhetoric emphasizes Ukraine is key to a Russian Imperial revival. Russia without Ukraine's population, Ukraine's resources is not a viable Russian Empire.
If the actual goal is to freeze Ukraine out of NATO and EU, cause chaos in Ukraine, limited invasion, taking chunks of Ukraine in small bits accomplishes the goals of doing so. I'm no military oriented person but I would say destroying the Ukrainian military via a limited invasion would have played much better to Russian doctrine than this full scale invasion. Limited invasion and Western sanctions would have been of limited impact.
This is why I don't believe that the goal was merely to show off Russian power or anything short of Russian annexation of Ukraine cause a limited invasion would have served those above stated "real" goals of Russia nicely and with much less risk.
No, I think it's very clear that Russia's stated goals are truly it's goals. That when Putin declares the Ukrainian state as illegitimate, and the Ukrainian people as being misled ethnic Russians, I think he believes in it 100%. This is why many people were thrown off about this occurring in the first place. A true believer in the righteousness of their cause is much more different than a power hungry realist.

How would a policy of neutrality towards Ukraine have enabled it to defend against Russia?
2014+ Ukrainian Army was slaughtered by Putin.
Western support built what is working today. Without western Intel, all these ambushes would not be happening. Without western financing, no Ukrainian drones would fly, no NVGs, no nothing. Without western leadership the Ukrainian army would still fight with Soviet doctrine and lose.
What we are seeing right now is a result NOT of Minsk and Putin appeasement but of US/UK policy to bolster Ukraine in case of evident Russian aggression, despite concern of "worsening relation with Russia".
He does not care about economics. He does not care about his or our People. He cares about the past and everyone west of him is an enemy complicit in that "greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century" to quote Putin himself.
Neutrality towards Ukraine would have in fact put Putin exactly where he wanted to be.

If you think this war is just about Ukraine you are mistaken. 
Listen to Putins hour long ramble about the West and old USSR before he gave the Invasion order.
This is not some smart geopolitical game to strenghen Russia that went a little too far.
This is about restoring old borders, regardless of the cost, militarily or economically to Russia. Most Analyist thought Putin would not attack, because it makes no sense - from their POV.
Putin sees the world from a different lense of the last century and in his mind this mad decision was the way to go and has been planned for a long time. 

At first I was upset at this.  Then I took a step back and pictured German gov't officials going to Ukraine to decry war crimes -- that is a really really bad idea given the history of german war crimes in Ukraine back in WW2.  It is ripe for outrage and is excellent propaganda for Russia: "Nazis come to UKR to bolster Nazi cause!"
There's plenty of history-neutral folks who can go there and bear witness.

At this stage it is not a situation that requires irrationality to stay put. It's far from a pocket yet.
As for ceding initiative, is initiative that thing where Russian armour advance along an ATGM lined road? I wouldn't want initiative like that. I wouldn't call it anything as grand as a trap, but sure, make them work and bleed for it. The decision to stay and fight or pull back can be made at a later date.
Who else is there that Russian commanders need to care about other than Putin and what he needs? The generals will cause the Azov battalion to drown in the blood of Russian soldiers, if Putin orders it. There are no other considerations.

In many ways it was decided.  We knew the short war was gone as an outcome by the 5th day of this war.  All other options open to the Russians were consistently worse and worse, to the point that their initial concept of "winning" evaporated after the first week.  Then they re-defined winning several times since then to where we are right now - deeper in a strategic box of their own making.
As to long-term stalemate, well it might be an option but a lot has to happen for that to become a hard-wired reality and I disagree that "all evidence" points to this right now.  A stalemate means that both sides have run out of offensive options.  They have hit an equilibrium wherein one or both sides cannot conduct offensive operations without risking being able to continue defensive ones.  I can see Russia trying for this but again the frontages they are shooting for are simply too large.  They have walked back from 1300kms, to about 800, again the entire Western Front in WW1 was about 500-600 kms and both sides parked millions on that frontage in order to create a stalemate.  Russia is not going to be able to secure an airtight frontage of 800km with 200k or even 350k troops even if they rush those new recruits into service in weeks even with increased ranges and lethality of modern equipment.  Ukraine might be able to defend that frontage because just about every citizen left is going to be part of that defence and Ukraine has mobilized far more manpower.   If Russia goes full military mobilization, maybe but we are talking over 1 million troops at least, which might be tricky to equip at this point that they have left roughly 2750 vehicles and systems all over the Ukrainian countryside.
So we are likely to see a pretty porous frontage, assuming the current Russian offensive does not fall flat.  In this the UA methods of hybrid warfare (a combination of irregular and conventional) appears to work much better.  Russians really do not have a form of this at the tactical level so they are going to try and dig in and hold on as UA strikes their rear areas to distraction.  I mean technically they could pull this off with some sort of highly charged mobile defence in depth and waves of ISR but Russia has not demonstrated anything like this so far. 
The only way Russia can pull off a stalemate, which is about their best option right now, is to drastically reduce their frontages.  Of course they are going to bleed out even more in this ill advised pincer-move-in-the-making.  I avoid making predictions because they are really tenuous in these sorts of situations.  However, my bet is that Russian mass will carry them forward, raw dim-mass.  And they may even be able to pinch off this whole thing they are setting up...but then what?  How do you secure the line between Izyum and Donetsk? That is 130 kms with really pissed off, highly armed and depot stocked Ukrainians....on both sides.  I am sure there are visions of a glorious encirclement but its LOCs are going to be exposed from both sides and are going to get chopped to pieces.
So a lot of "ifs" here.  IF the Russians can employ their mass coherently across the entire operation.  IF they can establish air parity or at least deny the air above them (won't solve ATGM, arty or self-loitering but it might keep the big stuff off em).  IF they can actually gain a level of information parity and decision parity, which is by far one of their biggest sins this war.  IF the UA get rolled over and does not decide to attrit first and then save its mass in a c-attck.  IF they can hold the two pincer corridors long enough for the Hammer forces in the south to try and crush the "trapped" UA forces (assuming they don't pull out).  IF they can then do a whole bunch of pivots and relief/reinforcements in place to re-establish a very long frontage along their gains.  IF the UA then fail on the c-attks (because the conveniently got rolled over and left a lot of combat power in the pocket) and fail to erode the Russian LOCs.  THEN, maybe the Russians can get to a stalemate, declare victory and shoot for a ceasefire, or a long slog along a ridiculously long frontage while UA forces hit their rear areas. 
This whole, "let's take a badly mauled force, throw in a bunch of reserves with no real integration time, then try and execute one of the most difficult military operations possible against an even better armed and motivated opponent than the first time" plan, would be a hard fail at any war college but hey, let's see how it works out.

Agree.
I think that direct intervention by any western or European country is the worst thing we could do. Yes, everyone can argue that weapons and aid is direct intervention but I mean by committing our military forces against the RA. As much as I'd like to see a couple ABCTs smash whatever is left of the RA in Ukraine while the RuAF is cleansed from the sky and the RuN is feeding the fishes, it is completely counter productive.
First off, it actually legitimizes and strengthens Putin. He gets to use the "See, I told you the western Nazis were going to attack us!! Unite for the motherland!!" bull. Attacking a country usually generates a negative opinion of the attacker by the attackee (see Ukraine since 2003 for reference). It will solidify their resolve to resist not make them magically depose of their crappy leader. It just makes the problem bigger and last longer.
Second, NATO does not have the manpower to conquer and control Russia. Take the area of Ukraine times about 24 and sprinkle in 4 times the population hating our warriors and trying to kill them. It becomes a worse idea than Putin attacking Ukraine. China (the real threat) would love to see every trained soldier and reservist of the entire free world tangled up in an unending conflict in Russia. Pretty much allows them to do whatever they want to whoever they want whenever they want. And yes, they would feed a Russian resistance high tech weaponry as fast as they could, so would Iran and everyone else around the world that hates us and could. 
The worst part is the faster and more complete we whoop them, the more likely we end the world as we know it. Back Putin into a cave in the Urals and give him nothing to lose and see how long it takes him to push the button. 
Lastly, like said above, it takes all other options off the table for a settlement. We attack and it is to the death, probably of everybody.
So Ukraine sadly needs to win this one on their own. We should give them every bit of material that we can. I don't know why we haven't stripped our National Guard bare and sent every bit of kit we can to them to arm up and protect all the reserves they are mustering. What will make this war last longer than it has to is the lack of equipment for the UA and especially it's reserves. 
By Ukraine fighting this on their own with only material help from the west and winning it they destroy Russia. They destroy the myth of Russia. Russia being beat by a little neighbor not even a third of it's size is going to be really hard to sell to the people, the elite and the army. Best of all, the whole world knows it. Russia becomes a non-entity and the whole world thumbs their nose at them. Most likely their federation would fall apart. If they value strength as much as it seems they do in their mythology, this is the worst thing that can happen to them as a country. 
It's also the best way to negate Putin. He won't be arrested and tried by the Hague, we all know that. It is unlikely that he will be deposed of right away no matter how bad the RA gets beat. But by handing Russia this big defeat it puts into question everything about Russia and Putin. Now he will be too busy internally to be a problem to anyone externally and in the long run will probably be deposed, but I don't think it will come quickly.

Want to add my thanks as well for the excellent analysis provided by TheCapt and Steve

We have tried tolerant engagement with Russia. Anybody think is has worked out well?
There are huge cost to kicking Moscow out of the civilized world ,oil and gas are not the only resources where Russia has become a huge portion of the world supply. We are looking at more defense spending, and less economic efficiency, for as far as the eye can see. The Russian people are going to suffer real deprivation and greatly diminished horizons for generations. All of this is awful. I am simply stating that Ukraine II in five years, With Warsaw flattened, and an order of magnitude worse refugee problem than the one we have now would be worse.

Putting aside Boris Johnson’s own political motives, I think his appearance strolling the streets of Kyiv with President Zelensky projected a powerful message of strength and courage.  This beacon of hope, Kyiv, which fiercely resisted and drove back the dark forces of Sauron, is being shown to the world as still being free.
But the flame of freedom needs to remain fuelled; I’m glad the Zelensky was not left empty handed.  I thank the Peoples of the UK for their support of Ukraine.
It is fitting for the Brit’s to up the aid ante by now offering the means to project counter sea-denial operations.  No longer will the Russians operate on the Black Sea with impunity!
This expands their ability to cause Ivan some pain.  Not only Russia’s naval forces but couldn’t merchant traffic even be called fair game.
Fitting too that it be done by a NATO member with their own sovereign nuclear force.
The frog continues to slowly boil.
 

I really like this guy but on this one I have to diverge on his analysis somewhat.  I think he has got a lot right in this video.  I do disagree on his assessment of the Russian military around the 30 min mark but that is because I do not think he fully sees the distance that it needs to go to "re-tool" in order to fight the war it is in, due in large part to how Ukraine is prosecuting it...but we can save that for another day and frankly Steve has already covered a lot of this.
I will say that I totally agree with his caveats and cautions going into this sort of discussion on "who is winning".  However, Perun is employing technical metrics largely based on strength and their application in achieving stated political objectives but misses the realities of a "collision in motion".  As I noted, political objectives can shift (they did) based on will to sacrifice and desired end state, this is the continual negotiation I was speaking of.  When a war ends, people can argue forever (and will) who won based on the sorts of political objectives lens Perun is employing; however, in the middle of it one needs a somewhat more nuanced set of metrics, in my opinion.  For argument sake I will present four that I teach:
Options, Decisions, Power (Will, Strength, Relationships), Negotiating Position.
Options.  There has not been a war in history that I can think of where the losing sides options did not compress, eventually to a single one - loss, and the winning sides options were either sustained or expanded.  Pick a war, any war and trace the strategic options spaces of each side and you will see this trend.  In this one, again "in motion", it looks very much like Russian strategic options have continued to collapse, to the point they had to re-write political objectives, while Ukraine has sustained and in many cases expanded theirs particularly in the form of further mobilization, offensive action, an ability to hit Russian SLOCs and even prosecute targets within Russia (allegedly).  Strategically Ukraine is options healthy, it can give ground and then re-take it.  Politically, they have already begun to re-design what security guarantees mean: all healthy options.  Russia has been the inverse on almost every option space metric.  So what?  Well unless Russia can regain strategic options spaces while compressing Ukrainian ones, this war is not going in their favour.
Decisions.  So far there have been, by my count, 3-4 strategic decisions made in this war so far.  1) The quick 72 war - decided very quickly against Russia, 2) The move to besieging Kyiv and major urban centers -and with the exception of Mariupol pretty much has failed, 3) The collapse of the Russian Northern front - a decisive withdrawal that many were somewhat skeptically waiting for, and 4) The decisive proof of Russian war crimes in re-captured areas - changed the tenor and nature of this fight, including its end-states while galvanizing western support.   None of these have gone in Russia's favor.  This is not to say Russia cannot achieve a decisive outcome in the future but in war you live with the decisions of the past and at least so far they are not pointing to Russian "winning".
Power.  A very complex piece that encompasses a lot of components.  Most focus on Strength - the ability to communicate effects but I will focus on Will and Relationships.  Here Ukraine has the upper hand significantly and the trend is accelerating - time is on the Ukrainian side with respect to Will and Relationships.  Ukrainian Will has further steeled in the last 40 days while Russian Will is stressed.  Relationships do not need much elaboration but it is easy to see Russia's relationship position in comparison to Ukraine.  The reality is that one can have enormous Strength but if you do not have the Will or Relationships to bring it to bear that Strength is worth much less. When it comes to Power, I am arguing that Ukrainian power relevant and employable in this war is rising while Russia's is waning.
Negotiating Position.  This one is kind of a summary of all of the above.  Who has the stronger negotiation position both internally (ie. with itself) and externally?   Negotiation position is reliant on Power but it is also highly effected by Options and Decisions.  I would argue that right now Ukraine has the stronger position.  There are indications of this in how Ukraine's negotiation narrative has changed with Russia and how the tenor within Ukraine itself amongst the population has changed.  Russia's position is again the inverse, its negotiating position continues to weaken both externally through violence and threat of violence and, more importantly, internally - hence why all the lies.
So when I look at all four metrics, to my eyes this war is not going in Russia's direction.  These are the things it needs to be "winning" at in order to achieve its objectives (i.e. The Means) and it is not at least as far as I can see.  This does not mean that this thing is hard-wired but it points to a position where Russia must climb an ever increasingly steep hill while Ukraine need only stand on top of it.

If NATO insists on continuing to split hairs in how will and won't arrange for Russians to come their deservedly unhappy ends,it seems to me Western air defense, and maybe MLRS systems manned by "foriegn volunteers "are next logical step.

Wow, hard to believe that was only 40 days ago.  I would caveat that this is a descriptive theory, not a prescriptive one.  Descriptive theories assist in orientation and allow us to better understand "what we are seeing", while prescriptive ones offer "rules for successful execution" and offer some predictive qualities (e.g. Clausewitzian attacking centers of gravity).  I have never really bought off on prescriptive military theory to be honest as it either has to be so broad as to be nearly inapplicable (see Clausewitz), or it is narrow and misses large pieces of the picture.  Descriptive theories provide a better observation reference but are not designed to predict or prescribe, we are left to figure that out on our own.
So 40 days later and what have we seen?  Well obviously both sides have been communicating across multiple mediums and in many ways.  Violence is the most obvious but we can see there are many forms of communication beyond violence in this war, narratives for example.  Even the atrocities committed by the Russian forces is a form of communication, one that I think the world has heard and understood very clearly; this will not be a clean war, because clean wars do not exist.  I think we forgot that fighting in far flung parts of the world but this one is hammering it home very clearly.  
What is interesting is the negotiation.  This is more than between the parties engaged in the war.  It is between a party and itself, and the reality it perceives in front of it; we negotiate with the future in war, an extremely uncertain future.  In the last 40 days the level of negotiation by all parties has been fascinating. 
We have watch the Russians have to renegotiate their entire envisioned end-state as the northern operational axis have collapsed.  We have watched the Russian political level negotiate with its own people by building a pretty weak argument resting on a ever increasing lattice work of falsehoods and lies.  Putin had better hope that Stalin was right about the size of the lie because even though the "first casualty of war..." and all that, the reality is that there is constant negotiation between the political and the people (Clausewitz nailed that one) but it is a highly bounded one.  As has been mentioned, culture plays no small part in framing that ongoing negotiation; however, in Russia's case the framework of lies keeps getting larger and larger, it is  matter of time before a counter-narrative starts gaining traction, much like it did during the Soviet-Afghan War.  So while Putin has had to re-negotiate his reality, he now has to try and re-negotiate that reality with an entire nation as more and more Russian soldiers "go missing" or come home in boxes.  Again, descriptive theory but where I come from this is not a particularly strong strategic position, particularly when you might need to mobilize your nation in order to pull off a weak draw by this point.
The Ukrainian negotiations have been no less startling.  I think there was a level of shock in those first four days and I would not be surprised if the Ukrainian government had a much more open position to ending this thing.  Now they have completely re-negotiated their reality and envisioned end-state:
From ISW: "Ukraine will not resume negotiations with Russia until Ukrainian and guarantor state negotiators finalize meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine. Russian atrocities in Ukraine and Kremlin efforts to falsely blame Ukraine for these atrocities have reduced the willingness of the Ukrainian government and society to reach a peace agreement less than total Russian defeat"
This is not the negotiation position of warring party that is worried about losing that certainty I spoke of initially, in fact it has been reinforced.  Further, the Ukrainian government is not negotiating with its people from a position of weakness, it is one of extreme strength.  The Ukrainian people are galvanized more now, than they were back on Feb 28th.  They have sacrificed thousands and now the Russian atrocities are coming to better light they know that they are "all in" for the next decade if need be.  Further, based on what I have seen on social media, this resistance has taken root at a cultural level and I cannot describe how powerful (and dangerous for the Russians) that is.  The fact that killing Russians is being elevated to a near religious calling that will likely be taught to grandchildren is about as bad as it can get for an invader, trust me we found that out the hard way in Afghanistan.  
So what?  Well the communication will continue, now in context of re-negotiated end-states.  Negotiation is continuous and is constantly in contact with the other four elements.  What I am looking for are more signals of what that negotiation looks like.  I will say that it is never simple, it has twists and turns the longer this thing carries on.  Signals of negotiation on all levels, the texture and nature of those negotiations, what influences negotiation?  These are all things I will be tracking.
Finally on sacrifice.  Both sides have sacrificed and will continue to do so, the real question of Will comes down to "how much?"  Here Ukraine clearly has got miles of depth before they will accept "too much", particularly as more civilian massacres turn up; what is the point of "tapping out" when they are going to kill you anyway?  The Russians nearly the opposite position: "how close to the edge are they?"  I do not believe for a second that Russia has signed up for a total war but they really close to an unintended one.  The level of sacrifice to win it could soar to the hundreds of thousands as this rate, is Russia willing to pay that blood price?  The economic damage and diplomatic damage are heading to total but it will take months for them to see that in full, let alone believe it.  But the continued bleeding for a few meters of dirt in Ukraine, all projected across social media and on the internet forever is a growing cost that I am not sure the Russian government can negotiate its way out of.
Finally the West.  Well we also have to come to terms with the future and it is not the one we thought it was going to be.  We continue to communicate through proxy means, and negotiate militarily through proxy, while directly through economic and diplomacy means; however, we still are not "getting it":
https://www.reuters.com/world/un-vote-suspending-russia-human-rights-council-over-ukraine-2022-04-07/
These mechanism matter to us, not Russia or other powers like China that want to re-write the rules.  This is a laughable gesture by a creaking global order that has its head so far up its own...well you get the idea.  I have said it before, this war is terrible and costly, they all are and I don't want to downplay that, but it is the beginning of an era of "power being power" we are entering into, a Season of Mars (not Venus) that has been a long time coming.  That is bigger than this war, it has implications for the next ones.  This elevates this whole thing beyond "a local border disagreement" -as some have posited- and towards a strategic "black swan" or shock.  The implications span from the tactical through to the geopolitical, that kind of thing is rare.

Putin will nominate Tucker for the Nobel Peace Price.