BletchleyGeek

As a wargaming aside, very few games capture this well.  The one thing John Tiller's Panzer Campaigns does best - with its 2 hour per turn - is to capture this... the challenge is go through the ~36 turns of grim slogging out until, as you say, we're off to the races (or one gives up). Flashpoint Campaigns is also quite good (and covering a modern era conflict with ATGMs, high lethality counterbattery artillery fires, etc.).

As a wargaming aside, very few games capture this well.  The one thing John Tiller's Panzer Campaigns does best - with its 2 hour per turn - is to capture this... the challenge is go through the ~36 turns of grim slogging out until, as you say, we're off to the races (or one gives up). Flashpoint Campaigns is also quite good (and covering a modern era conflict with ATGMs, high lethality counterbattery artillery fires, etc.).

Op COBRA stands out as a conanical example here - the first couple of days looked like, well, maybe not "failure", in absolute terms, but re-emergent stalemate and the failure of the hopes that had been laid on it by the buildup and extraordinary expenditure of resources.
Then suddenly, on day 3, hey ho we're off to the races.
Edit: and, of course, exactly the same dynamic - on different timescales - played out over the Normandy campaign writ large, and also at el Alamein in Oct-Nov '42.

It does raise some interesting ethical and perhaps legal issues - all of which I'm comfortable with - but it is not an 'assassination'.  There is a difference between this and war bonds, but I think not material.  It (sponsoring a grenade and seeing the people it attacks) does strike me as bloodthirsty, but there is some latitude for this.  Perhaps we should consult Chidi?  Although the war could be over by the time he opines
 

@Battlefront.com possibly I've missed a bunch during my involuntary hiatus >:/
Still, I do hear your trends view,  and understand what you're looking for, and that you see many danger signs for the regime in its current format. I even agree with all your highlighting of the various indications. 
My quibble (because this is an online forum and none of means anything, so a "quibble" is all it deserves to be called; I'm not married to this discussion >:D ) is the conflation of a  Russian,  big C, Collapse, as social/cultural entity with the implosion of Putin's Regime as a governing system. I personally don't see the two inextricably linked. I think Russia could lose a bunch, thousands of Putinistas, go through a major political purge and still come nowhere near Collapse as a society,or even militarily. 
The Army In Ukraine could collapse tomorrow, in-theatre,  yet the moment it's across the border it can stop and rebuild. So it'll never cease to be, as a fighting force. All external, direct violent pressure against it will cease.  It'll still be fed,  watered and supplied as normal and the troops will still be paid.  It can also get rid of a lot of unhappy/unwilling personnel and if necessary, it can turn against internal "foes".  So it wont be under the needed pressure to make it collapse. The collapse will be operationally limited and geographically restricted. So it'll be temporaryin both space and time. 
If you take away military collapse, that leaves regime change. Which is very hard without a degraded or internally riven Military. Even then, it could be more a changing of faces rather than a destruction of the existing order.  Public show trials will hell remind everyone who's now in charge.
Of course, If Putin tries to keep the War in Ukraine going Ge risks his personal health and the health of his immediate circle, plus dependents, but the system itself can still change and function with a Putin 2.0. The Tzar is dead,  long live the Tzar,  etc 
So,lots of indications of internal political drama, but I'm personally not buying "Collapse" as a reasonable descriptor for the end state 1 year or more from now. 
But that's just me :). 

Going to be really interesting to see more of these kinds of videos. I keep talking about competing snowdomes- this is what I think it should look like:

The Russian Air Defence layer starts getting holes blasted in it by HARMs (or is redeployed to save the bridges/ uses it's ammo up trying to hit HIMARs rockets or ground targets/ or is logistically neutered/ etc).

This allows Ukrainian airpower/dronepower to penetrate the AD layer and start poking holes in the artillery layer...

... which means that Russian ground units start to lose the protection of their artillery (no support) and become more exposed to Ukrainian artillery (reduced counterbattery capability)...

... which means they become increasingly vulnerable to Ukrainian ground forces.

Nothing revolutionary, but like Huba says, we haven't seen drone videos like that since Phase 1, and we all know how that ended. A pretty solid indicator that the Russians on the west bank are getting closer to collapse... providing Ukraine can keep the pressure up.

Okay, hold up.
Let's agree on some common descriptions and understandings. 
Can you clarify what you mean when you say total collapse? 
Is that societal,  military, regime, cultural,  scientific, what? 
You're describing some fairly dramatic consequences for what is fundamentally an expeditionary campaign that has no real consequences for Russia as a national entity - its borders will still be secure, the police apparatus will still function,  food supply will still be sufficient and oil/gas will still flow. While some extremists might draw some kind of demented zig-zag line from the loss of Kherson to the fall of Russia, its a big ask to get the other 99.999% of Russian society to make that connection and arrive at similar conclusions, to one degree or another. Or any degree,  tbh. And sure, a revolution doesn't need 99% approval  (ebthe Bolshies probably had at best 30% support even within St. Petesberg /Moscow before the civil war). 
So, ok, there could be a change in which mafia gang claims the Kremlin but there's zero indications of anything that could lead to "collapse". 
Big claims need big proof, and all that... 

Lemme clarify a bit here as it looks like we are at the point of the concept being tested.  First off @LongLeftFlank has said he is a Canadian expat; however, it is clear he does not hail from Atlantic Canada or he would know the term by heart - "fog eats the snow"  (in fact I get a whole central-Canada urban vibe off him, for which I may be totally off as we are a country of a rich and diverse cultural tapestry which we get very good at hiding - I, for example, hail from the far North originally but I have buried the hints of my somewhat 'wildling' roots quite well, I even use cutlery on occasion)
So what is this fog-snow thingy?  Not quite as JonS outlines but I kinda like the imagery.  So this idea was one we came up with way back as a possible method for offensive operations given the context of the overall conflict - peer forces, no air superiority, defensive-centric thanks to ubiquitous ISR and smart weapon systems.  It was an attempt to answer the question of: "how the hell is anyone supposed to attack in this environment when the other side can see you form up from space?"
In reality as far as I can tell fog-snow is the third step in an operational approach, which I am sure someone will (or has) turned into a flowchart and checklist:
1.  Establish pre-conditions.  Gain ISR/cognitive superiority - know better and faster than your opponent.  Neutralize enemy air superiority - this whole party is over if they can own the sky.  Logistics - build a system that can be put in place without getting hammered before you can even get into place, here lighter is better than iron mountains.  I am sure there is more here with respect to force generation, psychology and a bunch of higher level stuff but you get the idea.  I think it is fair to say that the UA spent the summer getting these in place over the Kherson area while holding off whatever that leg-humping the RA was doing in the Donbas..."just eating snow" maybe.
2.  Project friction.  This was where the RA completely failed in the Donbas.  They slammed fields and fields with HE -  careless in their affairs and focused on causing stress but not really projecting friction.  "What do you mean by that The_Capt?" - well friction is a Clausewitzian concept (I am pretty sure the Chinese masters also speak to it) that "war is a very large human organizational problem, and once you collect us in a group larger than about four we become horny cats to organization.  So friction is the "badness" that got in the way of order and formation.  Here Uncle C and myself diverge a bit as I do not see friction as the product of order rubbing up against order - an unfortunate byproduct.  I see it as an actual force on the battlefield that can be applied as projected uncertainty, or chaos; those deep strikes into the Crimea are a classic example. 
Regardless, the next operational phase is to project that friction upon your opponents operational system, and here the UA has done a breathtakingly good job over the last two months - on par with what they did during Phase 1 of this war.  They have hit Russian logistics, infrastructure as well as the morale and conative centers of the Russian military thru strikes on leadership and C2.  We have talked a lot about indicators and a big one has been the fact that the RA was never able to get out of that "operational pause" back in Jul.  My theory is this was because the UA hit them so well and created so much friction that the RA was only able to do disconnected symbolic pushes and never really got their operational feet back under themselves.  Hitting the bridges is an example of just how much they stressed the RA system, and now that system is theoretically fragile, or at least not anti-fragile. 
So once the UA had those first two where they needed them - and that is a sign of a military that knows what it is doing btw - they moved onto to step 3.
3.   Add Pressure - "Fog Eating Snow".  A square kilometer of fluffy cloud weighs about a half a million kilograms (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-does-cloud-weigh) which is not a bad analogue for fog.  It is not weightless by any stretch, it is how that weight is distributed and holds/exchanges its energy that makes it different, same goes for warfare...again, theoretically.  Once you have done steps 1 & 2, your opponents system is vulnerable but you have not changed the context enough for traditional manoeuvre warfare, this approach may work.  We saw hints of it on the UA defence at the battle of Kyiv.  Essentially the idea states that one employs highly distributed mass to:
Infiltrate your opponents defensive lines - you have already mapped out where the enemy is in detail as part of Step 1.  Further here it is best that your opponent is employing traditional conventional mass defence, which the Russians appear to be obliging.  ("Fog on fog" is a really interesting concept and could be the future of peer-to-peer warfare but lets leave that one.)  You use your ISR advantage to infiltrate in and around your opponents conventional mass concentrations, essentially filling in the 'gaps and seams'.  We know the RA has lots of these because they simply do not have the force density to create a uniform defensive line.  So UA has made a multi-prong set of advances along broad areas, which are looking "infiltration-y" - fog is not in one place, it is everywhere and gets into everything.
Isolate tactical "bites" - A few maps done by Grigb are showing what suspiciously like tactical isolation of some forward pockets of RA strongpoints.  Isolation means the removal of mutual support between positions.  If you can do that, particularly by eroding artillery support, you are in business.  Further this obviously has a significant psychological effects along with logistical implications. Once the enemies tactical positions are fully isolated....
Finish.  Pretty self explanatory but you want to quickly remove these tactical positions from the field either by surrender or annihilation, preferably by precision weapons systems as they are faster.  Rinse and repeat - Fog eating Snow. 
The whole "Adding Pressure" step is cyclical and the idea is that by repeating this process enough times, fast enough, the entire enemy operational system will collapse - this is the essence of attrition-to-manoeuvre, which is the opposite of what our doctrine says.  Key here is tempo.  This is weird as one is now employing attritional tempo instead of positional, but the rule still applies, one has to Finish faster than an opponents operational system can recover - which is why you did Steps 1 & 2.
And here we come to more questions than answers:
- Will it work on the offensive?
- Can you Finish fast enough, and how does one rationalize the fact that as you advance deeper this gets harder?
- When can traditional manoeuvre/annihilation take over?
- Have you gauged the enemies system correctly?  If it is more resilient than you thought you can bog down very quickly.
- Do you exploit success and go for a spearpoint, or do you keep doing broad system pressure?
I have no idea, these we can only observe and watch for indicators. The UA does look like they are trying a version of the idea, which explains all the "this won't look like a 'normal' offensive" and why we have suspected that the offence actually started back when we saw clear evidence of Step 2 over a month ago.  I suspect if this works that it won't look like much, and even bogging down...until it does.  If they have done this correctly, or if it will even work at all, the RA operational system north of the Dnipro will likely collapse suddenly after continuous pressure - think jiujitsu not boxing.  So I would not get too excited if the UA is not in Sevastopol by the weekend, that is not how this kind of warfare works.  We are way too biased by our western experiences on this one - this is system based warfare and the metrics are different. 
Anyway, sit back and keep eyes and ears open.  If this works like I can envision it, it may break modern military doctrine as we know it.  If it fails, the UA may not get too many more chances and this may turn into frozen conflict because the Left Hand of Mars (Defence) is back in charge...we shall see.
    

Quick spelling refresher:
It is:
Untermensch Übermensch with the relationship being:
        Untermensch < Übermensch
Best regards
Thomm
 
 

Hi to help me understand can you kindly put a bit more detail into this?
I thought he stopped the Russian forces from getting involved in many external situations. 

"Better lucky than good". People has low expectation on our supreme leader's intelligence level, we all know he got his elementary school diploma a while ago(that's a secret joke in China) .
But the chosen one has good luck, Putler took the lead of the formation and hit the minefield, so the chosen one has enough time to change his mind.  And when we look through the history record, we would find out "Winnie the Pooh" throw away a lot of bicycles (another joke)...

This is fairly off topic for this thread, but since this post got a couple likes...
From my perspective there is quite a bit of wishful thinking in certain circles in the west about Xi's weakness, but they don't really seem to be based on much evidence.
To be sure, it's difficult to read what the situation is inside party circles since everything happens behind closed doors, but there doesn't really seem to be any kind of organized resistance happening amongst the elite set that could perhaps influence what happens at the next national congress. On the contrary, all official messaging is firmly behind Xi. Even some of the more nationalist voices of dissent have recently been harmonized, without much fanfare (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3189923/nationalistic-blogger-sima-nan-banned-chinese-social-media). Although there has been some degree of protest around mortgage payments, it needs to be put in context of how many people still either support Xi or at least don't feel particularly compelled to mount a formal resistance. China is a big country and even a few tens of thousands of people making a fuss doesn't mean much.
Speaking personally, several of my acquaintances have reached out for support in finding a way to emigrate, but that's a very select group who anyway was open to pursuing opportunities overseas, and who simply find themselves frustrated by the ongoing COVID restrictions. They're part of a small group who have the perspective to see that their family's personal economic hardship might be alleviated somewhat if they found work outside. None of them expect or seek major change at home. Many Chinese - I think a vast majority - still accept that the current situation is just some "bitter they need to eat" (吃苦) due to the pandemic and supposed American bullying. This is the party line, and it's not really being widely challenged, as far as I can see.
All that said, I do believe that the recent attacks on the status quo vis-a-vis Taiwan are an attempt to reinforce the narrative that the US and other democratic nations are conspiring against the Chinese people, which is a good distraction from troubles at home. But the fact it didn't go any further than it did seems to me an indicator that the party doesn't want to do anything too radical ahead of the congress. I do think Xi will be confirmed for another 5 years, and I do think his Thought will be codified as the way forward for the party. Certainly his next term will be challenging, and things might get even more heated across the strait, but I don't foresee a total collapse - or unnecessary adventurism - in the near future (~12 months). It seems to me the party wants to keep things relatively stable ahead of the congress, given the challenges of climate change, COVID and increasing international criticism of their policies. Domestic stability is always number one priority.
I quite liked this piece which touched a bit on how "reading the tea leaves" of party inner workings can sometimes get a bit paranoid: https://merics.org/en/opinion/does-beidaihe-meeting-actually-take-place-and-why-does-matter
As usual, the Sinocism blog (https://sinocism.com/) is an indispensible resource for people interested in China, although it is currently on summer break. I also posted Perun's recent interesting piece on China over on the other thread (https://community.battlefront.com/topic/140295-china-vs-taiwan-please), which might be a better place to continue discussion.

No worries - new Grigb map to the rescue!

Discussion of what we know so far: 
We have two local pushes - at Inhulets bridgehead and in the area of Visokopilly + massed HIMARS strike at Chernobaivka (looks like this time the target is not airport but RU positions at settlement itself) It seems UKR were waiting for RU to commit 3 AK. Once they detected it was committed at Donetsk (see my earlier map) they started their push in Kherson. 

All war is a collision of certainties - which of course means it produces uncertainty.  And we as humans abhor uncertainty - as demonstrated here.
Most people have been in a physical fight at some point in their lives - schoolyard, bar, or whatever.  Thing is, very few have been in a lethal fight and they are a very different species.  A regular, "two guys having at it" is going to end with injury of some scale - bruises, knocked out teeth, maybe even a few broken bones.  A fight to the death is unique as neither party really knows how it will end; we have no real idea what lies beyond the veil.  That uncertainty alone makes deadly fights unique, having a different texture - parties know that one of you is not going home, one of you is going somewhere "else".  Now that is the uncertainty that those who do war must live with every day - worse, you live it long enough and you realize that everyday, even in peace, is lethal - means you never really go home again, but that is a separate conversation.
Unfortunately I cannot help you here.  I have no idea how this is going to unfold - how long Ukraine can hold out, how long and how much western resolve, or how long Russia can continue - no one does.  The Russian front could collapse tomorrow, or the UA could have a major setback - these are simply symptoms of a deeper deadly contest.
 This is the reality of war...all stop.  Now that we have got that out of the way.
Are things at a decision point?  Do we need to adopt new strategies because what we have "ain't working"?
Well for Russia, I expect the answer is "yes", while for Ukraine I would say "no".  Based on the progress of the collision, Ukraine has traded terrain (and lives) for time.  Time to force generate.  Which is not only getting all the sexy western kit, it is training people on how to employ it.  This is a lot more than crew training, this runs the full gambit all the way up to training people to be staff and plan complex joint integrated operations.  It takes 1-2 years in the west to train up a major, a senior tactical officer, to be able to function and wage operational level warfare - and Ukraine has a lot of operational level warfare going on right now. 
Russia on the other hand appears to be panicking.  They are simply sticking uniforms on people and pushing them at the front a la Enemy at the Gates. I highly doubt they are able, or willing, to churn out the full gambit of professional fighters they are going to need to sustain this war, while I know Ukraine is - we are training some of them right now. 
Russia has culminated at least strategically, possible operationally.  They never came out of the "pause" of last summer.  The fact that we are talking about them "freezing the front" is a sign of this.  We have gone over at length the challenges they are going to face holding onto an 850km frontage, and entire depth now in range of Ukrainian weapons and ISR.  Can Russia freeze this thing and drag it out for years - sure, the Donbass lines were a conflict region that lasted 8 years before this war.  I think it much less likely given the conditions they are facing now; however, it is always a possibility.
Ukraine has adopted a strategy of "hold, nibble and deep strike".  Holding everywhere they need to, nibbling to sustain the initiative and force Russia to react to them and deep strike to hammer stuff Russia cannot easily get back.  It seems to be working, so I am not sure if Ukraine needs to dramatically shift strategies right now.  And definitely not ones that come with too much political risk.
So where from here...running in the darkness? Well time is actually not on Russia's side, more so than Ukraine.  Ukraine has a couple years at least.  As I posted elsewhere, the US alone spent $2.3 trillion (I would love to see the total NATO bill) in a landlocked hole with zero larger scale geopolitical repurcutions.  I do not think they are out of runway yet.  Even the staunchest pro-Russian politician is going to have trouble turning things off in a couple years.  And then there is Europe - notoriously fickly bunch but when they do get their act together that have an economy that is in the same league as the US.  For them Ukraine is "too big to fail" now - so my point is we have some time here, like probably 18-24 months of continued support.
Russia, not so much. Its loss rates are too high.  It economy is going to start to buckle, signs are already there.  Worse, they are going to run out of excess human capital they can throw at this thing, then force generation will start to hit organs and bone.  Putin knows this, hence the incredible machinations to avoid general mobilization.  My point being that politically and strategically Russia has no escalation room left.  There is no "other gear" that won't risk completely blowing the engine, in my opinion.  It would be a different story if Ukraine were at the gates of Moscow but to Russia this is a foreign adventure and no amount of pundit quacking is going to change that.  Russia has pretty much broken its professional force in being, and its ability to force generate more forces, based on what we have seen, is questionable. 
So what?  Well, I am of a "stay the course" mind on this whole thing.  The Russian war machines has some really weird rattles and popping sounds in this thing and they are getting louder.  In my experience, these are symptoms of a machine that is not well.  Ukraine on the other hand is getting better, able to hit deeper and harder everyday.  Will they solve for the offence, no idea but I like to think so.  I am not sure we in the west could solve for the offence given these conditions; however, Ukraine is highly motivated and more importantly they are learning, fast.
So what have learned - war is hell, darkest before dawn, keep calm and carry on - kinda weird but all those platitudes kinda ring true, don't they?

So you toss out a metric that is utterly useless in isolation: 'war duration, months'. And then proceed to cite completely irrelevant analogies.
Followed by an empty statement that well, the French won, so who cares? Nothing to see here.
Why did you even bother? Your comments are usually a lot more thoughtful than this.

So sneaky but packing a punch like 1918 stösstruppen?
Truth be told, those large armoured charges that seem to be the concept (illusion?) for much doctrine have very rarely worked IRL (Prokhorovka comes to mind) unless the defender lacked effective anti tank weapons.
As you say mech is too hot, too loud, too easy to spot. The obvious fix is to make it cooler, and stealthier. That would probably mean getting rid of the need of having a crew and elaborate armour. I don't think that Steve's scenario "overweight people fighting wars from the mall" is close at all... securing comms is not a trivial problem (if fixable at all). Droning ISIS bastards (or just poor bastards often I am afraid) is one thing, going after a nation state with significant cyber/EW/anti-satellite capabilities is another matter. I think we will see more things like a "Stugna on wheels" with the operator relatively close but out of LOF (e.g. relaying via a small UAV), and the UGV being semi autonomous to handle loss of comms situations.
Also, winning wars by 1) having the other side being the one that goes on the offensive into a KZ, and 2) making them so uncomfortable that they give up and go home, I think is both smart and progressive.
I think this thread is close to solving the Riddle of Steel, Ukraine 2022 edition.
By the way, a warm and heartfelt salute to all Ukrainian folk on this thread in this very important date!

No, that is not right. Germany's deal with Russian gas started in 1958 when Germany started to deliver gas pipes to the Soviet Union.  The first gas came in 1975. The decision to close the nuclear plants came in 2011.
The big mistake of Merkels government was not to do anything about it after 2011.
The anti-nuclear movement in Germany was started by conservative citizens and was only later joined by pro-peace and environmental groups. But don't think those were some fringe groups - the movement had and has broad support in many different parts of the population.
Greenpeace had historically nothing to do with this, although it probably shared many of its goals and supporters.
Germany's reliance on Russian gas is a mixture of opportunity, greed & ignorance. Very simple. No need to drum up conspiracy theories.

Decommissioned plants have been disassembled and the sites returned to green space successfully. One is only about 15 miles from me. The storage/disposal/conversion of spent fuel waste is a political problem and not a technical problem.
And with that, I'm done with this, which Steve will be happy for. 

Dave

Russia's own Rodrigo Duterte?

Can we please leave pro/con nuclear discussion out of this thread? At least, if it isn't pertinent to the current war?
Like, what would have happened if Saporischja wouldn't be Europe's biggest nuclear but its biggest solar plant?
Any nuclear 'accident' there wouldn't be an advertisement for nuclear anywhere. But pushing Europe towards Russian gas? No way, that train has left the station. Especially for Germany, I can say that gas for heating is dead in 10-20 years. Old gas burners that have to be replaced will be replaced by heat pumps (=electrical). Right now, you can make a fortune here if you know how to plan and install those.
Of course, there is still the industry which needs a lot of gas, but that is going to be replaced with hydrogen if possible (long term).

There is only one Judge in the Cursed Earth, and He Is The Law!

 

Reminds me of a corporation that is doomed to go bankrupt and the best idea the CEO has is to change the name.

Some more about the power plant. Russia seems more likely to cause a problem through stupidity or ignorance than through malice (IMO)
Dave
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-94-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine

Hmm, well I know nothing of the good retired Gen but I am sure he has his own calculus upon which to base his opinion.
Personally, given the data and information I can see, the Russian military system is sick.  The devolution in tactics, the loss of anything that resembles operational offensive - they never really came out of the "pause", and them now dancing to Ukraine's tunes around Kherson are all symptoms.  Right along with reports of low morale, poor support, flailing targeting and other indicators of system failures (e.g. baffling suicidal OPSEC violations) point to an eroding Russian military system.  Russian option spaces have shrunk to the point that it appears all they have left are WMDs, "holding on" and tactical nibbling - they appear to have exhausted all others, if they have another gear they should have dropped into it back in Jun.
Of course Russia can lose, any nation can lose a war...I think we have demonstrated this enough times.  I suppose the question is "how much is enough?"
All war is negotiation - and sacrifice.
So in these sorts of things definitions become incredibly important.  "Russia cannot lose" - what does that actually mean?  Because by any political or strategic goals metrics, it already has lost this war. 
From a selfish western perspective, stepping back, one could argue that 'we' have gained-
- Ukraine - there is no other end-state to this thing other than Ukraine in the UE and NATO - Putin and his cronies can quack and blather but that ship sailed after March.
- Finland and Sweden.
- NATO defence spending commitments for the next decade.
- A clear demonstration to the globe that we are willing to defend the current global order to any and all revisionist states (kinda) - we have re-established a certainty.
Our opponent, on the other hand, has gained about what 60-80k sq kms of destroyed, largely empty countryside? [Aside: no there is not mountains of resources in the area they control, we covered that one already]  A crushing economic trajectory that will put them in the 3rd world if it goes on long enough.  A Europe that is literally re-wiring themselves away from Russia's one trump card.  A pretty much destroyed military - in both physical and more importantly psychological domains.  And a historic loss of global influence and credibility that will haunt them for the rest of the century.
Doesn't look too bad on paper...however, it leaves a nasty unresolved feeling doesn't it?  The single largest problem is that we in the west have never defined our war goals, our strategic and political endstates.  We went from "oh crap, ok so let's figure out how to support an insurgency", to "oh crap, ok so let's how to support a defence", to now, "oh, crap, let's figure out how to support an offence".  We have been stuck on, "let's make sure Ukraine doesn't lose" that we never figured out what it means to ensure that "we win...enough."  The west's victory is directly tied to Ukraine's outcomes in this war - all stop.  So what does that look like?
I have opinions but it is really up to our political leaders to lead and determine what "that" is, or is not.  The absence of this is apparent in a lot of the narratives such as Gen Dannatt's where we are very nervous about a run-away war in intensity or duration - especially duration because we have all had our fingers burned recently.
I think the impulse to re-establish certainty is overpowering, particularly within the large establishments of power such as government and militaries - they are the very definition of positive capability. Russia as a scary global power was a certainty, people built entire careers on it, trillions spent on defence for it.  The global order as we knew it, another enormous certainty, we built everything on it.  This entire war has been one enormous global uncertainty, and it is offensive to our sense of order - there are parts of the world where this sort of behaviour is expected, Europe was not one of them.
So victory is directly tied to "how much certainty is enough?"  And here is the thing, victory does not simply 'happen', which is very disconcerting trend I am seeing in the west - Ukraine+snazy weapons and support = "victory happens"...what it is not happening fast enough....happen faster!....hmm, maybe they should negotiate....
Victory is work, it is built, it is earned.  And we are back to sacrifice.  If we cannot define what we want, we cannot define what we are willing to spend to get it - which makes our negotiation position largely in the blind - more an act of faith and hope than a deliberate extension of collective human will to re-assert our certainty.  
I guess my question back to Gen Dannatt (with respect) and the mass of the mandarinate ( @LongLeftFlank that is a brilliant word btw) - "What is our certainty?" "What are we willing to lose?"  Until someone can answer that, then we really have no idea if this war is worth the continued effort from a western interests point of view.
Personally, I think that if we keep doing this for a decade, it will be time and money better spent than other adventures that were far less central to our certainty - but "how much?!", "how long?!"
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022
But what about the "recession" and my gas prices?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2008
My advice - we are in this thing until Russia is back in their box and we have a gang of thugs in power we can actually do business with - we will then risk manage that train wreck of a nation, we have dealt with worse.  We are in it until Ukraine is re-built into a shining example of what western national building really means.  We are in it until we can demonstrate what western collective resolve looks like for the rest of the world into the 21st century, and that while we may have to renegotiate what world order looks like, my grandkids will damn well have their hands on that pen.
But I am just some guy on the internet.  
 
 

Yeah, but you know that maths is worthless. Counting kms in jun/jul 1944 would suggest Eisenhower reaching Berlin sometime in the 1950s, for example.