Gnaeus

You realize that this sentiment is really the problem, right?  I mean there is nothing categorically wrong in what the ambassador said for an objective point of view.  Russia has not demonstrated that it will act in good faith during the conduct of this war - the systemic warcrimes are a big hint.  So it would be a very good idea to approach any peace negotiations very carefully.
You do not have to like someone nor agree with their politics, but that does not automatically mean everything they say is incorrect.  Statements or positions need to be weighed against the facts, not affiliations, no matter which end of the spectrum the come from.  
There are exceptions of course, for example if someone has demonstrated habitual lunacy or use of mis/dis-information, sure go ahead and burn them as a source, but the Ukrainian ambassador does not fall into that category as far as we know - unless you have proof beyond her possible post-secondary education?  You are burning her based in affiliation alone or at least it appears that way, and that is intellectually lazy to be blunt.
Finally this whole line of thinking is a significant fracture point that has, and will be exploited by all sorts of players.  It is in fact step 2 in the subversive warfare playbook - widen the fractures that were already there and make them unsealable; the death of compromise.  Step 3 is to harden elements from either side of the fracture into organized and connected collectives that are able to self perpetuate and metastasize - a carcinogenic operation. This is a long standing recipe on how to destroy a society from the inside out.
This is exactly the type of operations Russia did before 2014, and was attempting before this war started.  Every nation that borders Russia is combating this sort of influence.  And it will very likely be what Russia falls back on once this war is over - assuming there is a functioning Russia left.  China is also very good at this game, it is also out of their playbook, but they are much better at it.
So you do not have to agree with the current US president - and sure go ahead and insult him based on ageism. But it is hard to disagree with the results in Ukraine, so far.  This has been one helluva tough one to steer through from a strategic and political level.  And it has not been perfect.  But for navigation through the first real proxy war of the 21st century I gotta give it a B+ so far.
As to the rest of the politics, well you Americans can go argue that - preferably on another thread.

And what is the quality of those new systems?  Given shortages in tech supply within Russia these systems will likely have issues with guidance systems and flight controls.  They will be then plugged into a 3rd rate ISR architecture that is being eroded as well.  Which is plugged into a Command and Control system that was a mess to start with.
This is what it looks like when organized crime tries to fight a conventional war.  
We have been watching the one-way erosion of the RA for over a year now.  The symptoms of systemic failure are written on the walls, underlined and bolded.  I am getting a growing sense that the upcoming collapse may be spectacular.
All war is communication, and Russia has been sending out signals of failure since this thing began.  All war is violent, but it has to be effective violence.  Simply doing disconnected or ineffective violence only reinforces an opponents resolve because they get angry, not despondent. You never create a curve they feel they are falling behind.  Russia has been a testament to ineffective violence in this war - it has not been focused or connected, a flailing windmill of murder and rage that looks scary for the first few seconds and then everyone realizes it is in fact a seizure.
Russia has already lost this war, they likely already know it.  We have already won it, but some refuse to see it.  All that remains is how do we end it?

Another example of why this is more than just another wargame site. I think the discussion of evolutionary psychology could hold its own in a forum devoted to the subject.

So not to pile on and beat up.  I get the position, video after video of Russian saps getting blown up may seem excessive and masturbatory, and for some it is. However, every video gives off information. Some is just noise, or repetitive.  While others are gold and constitute key indicators which when confirmed by other observations can point to trends.  Trends lead to broader deductions and assessments - this is not a single “keyhole” it is thousands of them.  In most keyholes the milk maid is bathing, but then you start to notice the copy of Karl Marx next to the tub.
ISW and other OS intelligence analysts are doing exactly what professional military are doing.  Looking at all the “war porn” and pulling out trends and indicators that tell a larger story.  Oryx is not counting blow up vehicles because people get their jollies seeing blown up Russian tanks.  They are doing it because individual losses sum up to larger attrition trend which chart the course of a conflict.
This is micro-analysis and has pretty much set this group apart - or did, other groups have caught up.  Example: back in the early days of the war the majority of open source assessment (and frankly military as well) were expecting this war to take a predictable course.  A rapid overwhelming Russian invasion, shock and collapse of the UA, and a drawn out insurgency against a puppet Ukrainian political regime.  It was places like this forum where micro-observation first challenged a lot of macro assumptions.  We saw war porn, but it added up to something going very wrong for the RA.  In fact it pointed to something even more fundamental shifting in warfare itself.
This was not a one-shot deal.  Micro-analysis backed up be expertise has kept us well ahead of the pack in all phases of this war.  Phase II did not become a protracted set of urban sieges - the RA logistical losses and Ukrainian resistance demonstrated that.  Phase III did not see an RA “cauldron” despite their use of WW1 levels of massed fires.  Phase IV the UA counter offensive did shock us at its scope but one could see that this was indeed a collapse of the RA operationally on two fronts (one slow, one fast).  Phase V - Op Russian Leg Humping: was going nowhere - one need only follow the famous “battle of the T” to see why.  And we will use it for Phase VI to try and understand how the UA offensive is unfolding.
So while some may only see Russian sods getting blown up.   I see: poor basic field craft in poorly constructed trench lines which suggest basic training shortfalls.  No effective C-UAS counter measures on the RA side.    The evolution of drone warfare throughout.  The big fact that Russia has still not been able to create information denial (let alone control) in the battle space. HVT losses within the Russian operational system - C2 nodes, A2AD platforms, engineering and logistics.  Failures in RA C4ISR…the list goes on.  I do not see this through a single war porn keyhole, I see them through thousands of them.
Are these view’s skewed?  Definitely.  But the fact that we do not see thousand of videos of Russian UAS blowing off UA heads is telling in itself (does anyone think the Russian info sphere would show any restraint in this?).  Open source is “open”.  In the end it is about filtering noise and trying to hear signal - and again, this is exactly what ISW or any other public analysis platform is doing, along with professional military.  We are just doing it in house - this is how the sausage is made.  What bakes my noodle is that in my lifetime a large virtual collective is able to conduct this sort of work, and demonstrate accurate assessments (more than just a lucky once or twice) is game changing.  
In twenty years we will all be old, senile or dead. However an another group of young(ish) folks will do this for another war but they will likely have AI support (we have already seen it here in its infancy).  They will have access to even more raw information but will have a better ability to use it - they may very well be directly involved in the prosecution of the war and not just sitting in chairs on the sideline.  We are at the beginning of an age of Open Source Warfare - all those keyholes are “pixels” in reality.

Now, now this gentleman has presented a very coherent strategy on how to decisively lose the next Cold War/strategic competition.  This will guarantee a US hard power contraction, which means soft power will be right behind it - I mean why invest in the US on many levels if they refuse to actually “get involved”? What value is US diplomacy if security means America only?  This is right up the alley of a certain political figure that it could be ripped from one of his speeches. 
And into these vacuums other powers are going to quickly pivot - they already have.  With their increased influence investment in the US will start to dry up - deals will be cut to ensure it, as will supply chains and consumption.  In a few years the US dollar will no longer be the global reserve currency.  This will pretty much set up the West for fracture as Europe will figure out pretty quick that it has been largely abandoned to its own devices.  A whole lotta nations in the Indo-Pac are going to also bail.
I mean the logical extension of Step 1 is China can invade Taiwan, North Korea into South Korea, India and Pakistan can totally blow up.  Screw Ukraine. Russia can pretty much do whatever it wants. US out of NATO - because that entire thing rides on allied intervention, so Europe is on its own. 5 EYES is gone.  Forget global cooperation on trans-regional crime and terrorism because unless it happens in the US - “not our problem”.
In fact this is so monumentally stupid that of course people who are looking for easy answers in a very complex and frightening world are gravitating towards it.  I mean the entire deal that keeps the US on top  is built in global stability backed not only by the US dollar but also carrier groups - so it is entirely logical that if you pull those groups back and let them float only 200 miles off the US coastline that US global influence will remain extant.  The US can probably drastically reduce defence spending and focus on building walls though.
Here is a crazy idea: if the US does not step up and in to keep some sort of order on this planet, someone else will. The US does not get to withdraw into fortress North America (while choking out immigration with a declining birth rate) and remain a global economic superpower.  Hard power backs soft- that US dollar as much as whatever the US is selling (or more importantly, buying).  At least 3 generations of Americans had that one figured out, but now for some reason people have totally forgotten.  
Regardless, thankfully these complete amateurs are not running the show, yet.
 

Maybe it's because I'm too idealistic, but all this all this "the US should not involve itself" is just a fancy way of saying "oooh, there's a horrible going on, let's just watch and not do anything".
How can someone look at Bucha and the Mariopol and kidnapping children and whatever else and say that?
No matter how you spin it, it is such a heartless position and always will be. How can someone say this and live with themselves?
I will never understand.

this is getting really old and is a complete derailment of the thread.  Unless you think Ukraine has no right to decide its own future what the heck are you going on about?
If you do feel that Ukraine has no right to make any decision on its future that Russia does not approve of then go somewhere else.
Enough already.  Calling the Ukrainian fight to defend its right to self-determination from a barbaric aggressor state "choosing to become a party to various and sundry conflicts" is insulting to all our Ukrainian members of this forum who are currently part of a fight to defend their country's right to exist.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65015289
Just another factor in the lack of populist opposition to the War from the Russian people. If you don't live in a totalitarian police state, you have to stretch your mind a bit to recognise how the disproportionate responses to mild opposition can eliminate any potential tendency to stand up to the bullies in charge.
Then you add in the lack of contrary opinion in the publicly available media, and you have a fermenting vessel for the zombies who grumble only about the conduct of the war, not that it is being waged at all. Those Russians who have the most Western-shaded comprehension of exactly what an atrocity the whole "Special Operation" is, are the ones with the most to lose, and still haven't enough power to make the damndest difference to State policy, so they're clearing out in their droves, where they can.

That is not the issue.  Of course out of control escalation of this conflict is a worry.  What a lot of people in the “must not start WW3” side of things tend to forget is that Russia is just as afraid of WW3 as we are.  Proof: despite severe setback and bleeding at historic levels, Russia has not turned to WMDs in this war.  Now we know that they do have red lines and we cannot forget that; however, we should also remember that we have red lines too.  
There are lines that are worth escalation and Russia (as well as ourselves, apparently) need to be reminded of that.  Controlled escalation to be sure, but if we’re are too terrified to act in a measured response to escalating Russian aggression we basically cede the strategic initiative.  This would give Russia de facto escalation dominance in this conflict.  FDR was right, the thing we need fear the most is our own fears.
A measured but clear escalation to this drone nonsense is required and while we are keeping this war in a box, we also cannot let our fears - nor forget that they are just as nervous as we are - hold back deliberate action.
”But why are we not imposing a no fly zone/boot on ground/striking Moscow”.  Couple reasons - all war is negotiation .  Escalation ladders have  rungs one can only use for the first time once, after that they become de-escalation options or norms of conflict.  So we want to keep strategic options open.  If we jump straight to no fly zones, we have a lot less escalation room before things get to a nuclear exchange threshold.  
Second one is trying to avoid inducing strategic panic on our opponent through miscommunication.  A no-fly zone over the Black Sea may seem reasonable to us but rationality is relative.  Russia may see this as a prelude to establishing air superiority for an invasion and panic.  Putin needs a centralized and functioning control system on his own escalation and panic is toxic to that.  So in this responses must be clearly communicated and demonstrated through signalling.
So, for example, if one is going to employ offensive cyber to shut down Russian military airspace control, unlike in a Grey Zone/Subversive context, this action would have to be more clearly a communication of action - all war is communication.  The primary mechanisms of that communication are cause and consequence.  Attribution would need to be clear and message needs to be received that buggery out over the Black Sea against US assets has consequences.
This speaks to the reality that the west needs to accept, this war is as much ours as it is Ukraines.  With China now communicating along with Iran it is becoming clear that this entire thing is becoming a global decision point in just how the global order will proceed.  We are not supporting Ukraine because Russia is bad (they are in this), or “the children!”.  We are doing it because this war is an attack on the global order that demands a response or we risk losing that order itself.  In many ways this war is already moving towards a global conflict as power poles invest in it as a proxy conflict - it is becoming an indirect WW3.  And while we must do what we can to avoid a direct WW3, we cannot let that fear drive us to losing the war we are already in.

1 year of the war is passed. From the start of the invasion and to the huge count of air and missile strikes. One of my friends has been killed by wagner artillery in Bohorodichne village near Bakhumt. My father-in-law has been killed by storming the defensive enemy positions in the Kherson region 1st of October. I gave 3 of my salaries (all what I have)on the first day of the war on the military budget. Thanks to all of you, thanks for your help. Taking carry of our refugees, helping our soldiers to destroy enemy forces with AT weapons, artillery, APS, AFV, and Tanks, peoples who served in foreign legions. Thank you for giving billions of money to support our economy. Special thanks to battlefront for small support for me, when I asked about a discount, they gave me 2 games with all DLCs for free - I didn't expect this. Some of my relatives were in Kherson in occupation, and all high-value electronic and expensive things were looted from them by Russian forces. And now we don't fear rocket strikes (10 times they exploded 700-1000m from my house) we don't fear nuclear threat, we don't fear the second army in the world and you shouldnt. Sorry for we English would that what I want to say for all of you, I can tell you many things about the war but first i will try to improve my language knowlages.

Ok, let’s say you are totally right.  The Col Macgregors of the world have got a bead on reality and we here are deluding ourselves (completely ignoring our track record to date).
The war unfolds as you outline above…so freakin what?  It will be a hard fight, so we should quit now?  We should quit now and hope that Russian and Chinese expansion stops somewhere “over there”?  Especially after we pulled off the field, tails tucked between legs.  Or maybe we should negotiate and hope they leave us alone?  What possible historical experience points to where backing away from an expansionist dictator is a good idea?  That somehow they take a foot off the gas when they win?

Seriously, who are the people who promote this?  They cannot be the children of the great generations who built this world. If they are they have forgotten what their grandparents and parents fought and sacrificed for.

It will never not make me laugh that the party that's now bitching about money spent in Ukraine...as opposed to Ohio...were the same party that gutted the regulations that would have done much to stop or mitigate the East Palestine disaster. 
And to drag this back on topic...that 5% of the US budget spent on Ukraine to wreck the Russian army is pretty much the bargain of the millennium. Stop having yourselves on.

Actually I don't disagree, but the problem isn't that we are giving money to Ukraine, it is that we don't support our own folks.  We could do both.  Why we don't take care of our own people is a domestic issue and really has nothing to do with Ukraine.  Frustrating?  Yes
As someone who's COBRA benefits are about to run out and I am now researching the medical care marketplace I have a strong opinion about how we take care of our own and who has effed that up, but that is for an offline discussion.

While I (and I think most here) sympathise with your position here I think there may be a little bit getting ‘lost in translation’:  “Beggars can’t be choosers” is a common phrase in English which is not meant to imply any additional offence to the “beggar” in question, to the extent that the word itself can be seen as derogatory.  It’s just a pithy way of saying that people with no other choice shouldn’t be too critical of the form of assistance they get.  “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” is another one. 
Sorry if you knew that; I don’t mean to patronise.
Ultimately though Butschi does have a point: there is no legal obligation on any European country to give Ukraine anything (as brainless and immoral as it would be for them not to).  The people on this board will likely be sympathetic to your complaints about the rate of assistance offered but there are those who would take offence and use it to justify ceasing assistance altogether. 

It’s a bit like putting Wehrmacht insignia on your tank:  ‘dark humour’ to you and your mates, forgivable foolishness to friends who understand your plight, gold dust to those who want ammunition to feed a propaganda war.

Ya and this is why I often wonder if the entire Human Experiment is a good idea.  We were built to function in social groups of about 50 or less, with an overall population of less than a million globally.  Our lifespans are too short, and cognitive horizons too narrow for the massive social undertakings we are in.
During COVID we could not get people to "sacrifice" in wearing face masks. Asking the average individual to draw a string from "why is my light bill so high...now I can't buy another pair of shoes to round out my collection and my Sik Sok channel will die!" to "the entire western order that allows for massive domestic debt is threatened" is likely asking too much.
You hit on another point at the back end - offramps.  We have talked about a "soft landing" for Russia or even an offramp strategy for Putin, but I honestly get the sense that we are in "all in" territory.  We were not in the first six months of this war, but far too much blood has been spilled.  War being political is only ever half the answer, it is also deeply personal.  History is full of wars that went on long past the point of political rational.  Clausewitz should have said "war should be politics by other means" because more often than not it gets hijacked.  And when it does, we historically go to very dark places (e.g. Crusades, Thirty Years War).  I suspect this war has taken on a darker tone where saner heads will not prevail - another thing the west needs to wrap its head around.  This is a war of the "old ways" and dark angry red gods rule these lands.

Not even close.  We have lost no lives, at least not government sanctioned (volunteers are a different story).  The US alone spent over $2T in Afghanistan.  And apparently nearly $6.4T on the whole MENA problem set since 9/11: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on-middle-east-wars-since-2001-study.html
Now the pace of the contributions in Ukraine has been pretty fast but it still is nowhere near the pace and scale of spending of the Gulf War:
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/c/costs-major-us-wars.html
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040
We have joined this war, there is blood on our hands and we are in it to defeat another nation state.  There is a lot of nervous twitter going around on this war, and frankly a lot of it is not really based on realistic factors (eg the bottomless Russian pit of manpower).  But the failure of western perceptions to understand this war for what it is, and to be ready to make sacrifices to reinforce and sustain the framework that protects our way of life - as messed up and upside down as it is at times - is the one thing that does keep me up at night.  
The political unity being displayed is deeply heartening and I think we definitely have pulled it together; however, we have not articulated the likely real costs and what it is worth to us very well.  I have no doubt the grown ups up top understand all of this clearly (fingers crossed), but we live in democracies, so Johnny Lunchbox and the goof down the street with the “F#ck Joe Biden” flag need to get it too.  Or at least enough of us, and that is the part that does make me a little nervous.

thanks for that uplifting positive message on Valentine's day.  Did you buy your wife dead flowers?

What a great first post, very informative, thank you for that.
Presumably @Battlefront.com will be along shortly to offer an official welcome.

Ok, well you have already been pretty badly beat up on just about all your comments and positions with respect to military assessment.  This is not a bar, posting some credible references or something, anything that supports your position may be an idea as we move forward.  But it is a free country and that comes with all the good and bad in the end.
So lets talk about "Russian Advantage", because that is what this all comes down to in the end.  In line with the Russian Economic Advantage, what is the Russian Military Advantage and how does that translate into future outcomes etc?  Well the obvious one, from those who deeply study warfare, is capacity.  Russia, as has been shown on infographics since day one of this war, has got mountains of steel and an ocean of fighting aged males to throw at a poor huddling Ukraine as it just barely manages to hang on.  There is some truth to this although I personally think it has been over emphasized to a large extent as Russian willpower to actually spend all that steel and blood is clearly not a "done deal" with respect to this war.  If it was, Putin would have fully mobilized at the terrifying scope and scale the Russian Bear is capable of as demonstrated by so many Hollywood movies and myth.  Ok, lets not quibble, the RA is a big ol beast, with a large industry behind it...got it.
So does size still matter?  Does it matter in this environment?  Does it become a liability in this environment?  And finally, why has Russia largely failed on the battlefields of Ukraine if size and attrition were the critical factors in this war?  Why has Russia largely failed on the battlefields of Ukraine when they also had advantage in manoeuvre?
What I do not get from the "Russia is going to win" crowd, is what is their explanation of the exceptionally poor battlefield performance of the RA, which has led Russia into what is now a morass and quagmire (if this was a US war, people would be all over those words)?
And Russian performance - outstanding gunners and all - has been abysmal.  Pulling from the RUIS preliminary report:
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-conventional-warfighting-russias-invasion-ukraine-february-july-2022
Russia had enormous mass advantage in Phase I of this war.  12:1 of mechanized forces north of Ukraine (pg 1).  By all traditional military metrics that is an overwhelming force ration advantage.  They were stopped cold.  Worse, after a month of mooing like cows in column while getting pounded they had to withdraw from 2 out of the 6 major operational axis of advance, many of those units reportedly at 20-30% strength after a month of being cut up and hammered by UA "tiny" artillery.  So that was the first really bad sign, again if the US had suffered a similar setback in 2003 south of Bagdad people would have lost their minds - or gleefully celebrated the downfall of US power in the region, whichever their leaning.  Ukrainian War Phase I - this is done, it is fact.
Then Russia did a political spin in quick order and re-drew the definitions of victory.  "The Northern Offensive as a feint" which is brutally laughable at those force ratios pointed at a capital city and seat of political power in nation you are invading.  They then re-set the official line as "The Donbas" and began a crushing and grinding assault on the region during Phase II of this war.  Recall the cauldrons and pincers with bold red arrows all over maps last Apr-May?  "Attrition against Russia will never work!" people cried..."Ukraine cannot win"..."Russia has reframed this war to their strengths."  Well turns out they were wrong then too.  Russia, at one point at Severodonetsk, has mounted over 900 guns in a density to rival the western front in WWI.  They turned entire fields in the Ukraine into moonscapes as they completely abandoned mechanized warfare and did a "blast-advance-repeat" older style of overwhelming firepower.  But what actually happened?
Well they did not achieve an operational level breakthrough - against a vastly outnumbered and gunned UA.  We did not see a single mechanized, or otherwise, break through - let alone break out - in that campaign.  We did see some horrific Russian river crossing attempts and casualty rates, but remember "Russian Bear!!"  The UA stood back and took it.  I recall the rumblings on social media of UA troops, under trained and equipped for this fight...it was only a matter of time.  But it went nowhere.  Russia managed to take Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk and advance a couple dozen kms towards Slovyanks - which I am sure as a "studier of warfare" you recognize as the obvious operational objective in the region. 
And then the RA stalled and ran out of gas.  No other way to put it.  At a strategic level Russia "mobilized" which is never a good sign for how things are going on the ground (see: conscription and Vietnam).  Russian attacks and firepower all waned.  Phase II was a poor outing that had high costs and yielded very few gains.  And then Phase III happened.  
The UA, who was supposed to be on the ropes and barely hanging on, went on the offensive.   We all knew Kherson was an operational objective but conditions were clearly set for Kharkiv as well.  My hypothesis is that the RA burned itself out so badly at Severodonetsk that the entire Kharkiv line eroded out.  So then we saw this:
https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/09/15/a-stunning-counter-offensive-by-ukraines-armed-forces
That is what a breakin, breakthrough and breakout battle looks like.  It does not look like what we are used to, but the UA managed to make the entire right flank of the RA collapse in about 30 days.  And then they were not done yet:
https://www.graphicnews.com/en/pages/43152/ukraine-kherson-counteroffensive
Now this was not Dunkirk that we wanted, but retaking the capital of a region that Russia just did a big show of annexing is nothing but a win in my books.
And so here we are, Winter 2023 and the "Ukraine can't win" crowd - who do have legitimate concerns, I will not take that away - are back.  So I am not going to dig into the current state of the RA or an assessment of their actual fighting capacity at this point based on what we are seeing - human wave attacks with weaker artillery is again not a good sign.  All the while the UA is getting larger and larger injects of greater capability.  Or how fundamental conditions like ISR, air power or sustainment have not actually changed.
What I am going to do is make the "Ukraine can't win crowd" do the actual work to prove their point.  Based on all of that above, and the progress of this war to date, you have two ways to go.   The UA and Ukraine are barely holding on and are going to break any second - lets call this the Macgregor school.  Or the "Russia is just getting started and has magic rabbits by the fuzzy buttload in hats".  Based on the progress of the war so far you are going to have to provide evidence and facts that support the idea that conditions have fundamentally changed.  That those changes will alter the current trajectory of this war.  This is something I have not seen one credible coherent argument put forward in this whole thing.
In fact, I will give you opportunity to take a shot, and then if I have time I might just try to do it for you, if I can. 

If you are going to start throwing statements like these around you need to put out the facts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_financial_crisis_(2014–2016)
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product
GDP contraction in 2015 (post sanctions) was somewhere in neighbourhood of 2-2.5%.  It was around 3-3.5% contraction in 2022:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/impact-sanctions-russian-economy/
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/russias-economy-end-2022-deeper-troubles
Inflation.  In 2015 inflation increased to about 13%  (see Wikipedia page on Russian Financial Crisis 2014-2016).  In 2022 annual inflation in Russia - 13.7%
https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/russia-inflation-rate/
Russia’s capital market has taken a serious hit, dropping by 1/3 and has not recovered (see Impact-sanctions-Russian-economy on the consilium site).
So the reality is that beyond some Ruble propping which comes with some risks as I understand, your central premise is not backed up by facts.  The Russian economy, based on some central indicators like GDP growth, inflation and capital markets has take hits equal to or worse than “the immediate shock of 2014”…and this is without the drop in oil prices that occurred then.  
The entire argument falls apart out of the gate at this point.
Ok, another big statement “we all know” without any foundations in facts.
First off Russia is currently holding about 87 thousand sq kms of Ukraine right now…about 18%.  So on the surface, “oh my that is scary”.  Well it skims over the fact that within that 87 thousand sq kms is the original occupied territories in the Donbas and Crimea, which come to about 42 thousand square km…which they have occupied since 2014.  So in reality the gains in this war come to about 45 thousand sq kms or roughly 7.5% actual gains within Ukraine that they did not have before this war.  Based on 350k dead or wounded, that is about 46k per percentage gained, or 6k sq kms.  I do not know where the Russian finish line is but it had better be close at those loss rates.
I have posted the economic realities of the Donbas, which was one of the lowest economically performing areas of Ukraine pre-war and realities of the Crimea so many times that you can do the work to go dig them out.  But essentially we have debunked the entire “it is all about oil and gas” more than once.  Russia did not need those reserves, or in the case of the Black Sea, already had control of them.  And the costs of accessing them are going to exceed any gains for a very long time, maybe never at this rate.
”The reality” is a lot of people with a quick finger on their favourite Reddit or wherever get these “facts” and then repeat them so that they become “known”.  Few of these people actually put in some time on research and get enough facts to create context.  So a lot of your initial premises are in fact flawed, which unfortunately means that your deductions have got some problems too.  I would respectfully suggest that you need to revisit some of this and then come back to the discussion.

umm  .. so do quite a few other folks here many of whom have serious credentials on doing so.  Unlike myself who is purely a casual student and gamer.  Could you provide some credentials that would elevate yours beyond my couch potato observer level?

Your faith in the intelligence community and scenario analysis is actually refreshing - lotta people in my line of work beat up on these guys because of their poor track record and rigid approaches. I think this is unfair and loses a lot of babies with the bath water.  It is like the old adage “no plan survives contact”, which often becomes a rallying cry to “not overthink” which turns into “well let’s just not think”, which is dangerous.  Everyone misses the next part of that adage “time spent on planning is priceless”.
To my mind the value of scenario creation and assessment is not its predictive value.  We rarely get it right, and even more rarely act on it. BFC created a scenario for a possible war in Ukraine set in 2017 that involved NATO full intervention.  On the surface utter fiction and they got it completely wrong…silly BFC.  But in thinking about that fictional scenario (and playing the game) a lot of people could have been better prepared for this war when it happened in 2022 as it has.
The value is in the exercise of creating deep understanding of all the variables and moving bits of a future problem, not assigning percentages and word metrics.  I have been deeply in force planning and development in my career, stuff upon which billions of dollars was riding, and we never got the future right on any given scenario.  What we did do is get clarity on the trends/patterns that drive those scenarios and pinning capability development on those is never a bad idea.
I for one would be interested to see what the NIE, or whoever, is saying about what happens after this war ends. I really do not care what percentages of certainty or uncertainty are, however, I would really like to know how they arrived at them.  “How we learn something” is not based on how well our predictions turned out - this is sentient adaptive non-linear systems largely constructed on self generated fiction, bounded within linear systems (macro-physics), sitting on quantum mechanics - we are not going to solve for that anytime soon.  It is based on how we analyzed and assessed the scenario in the first place - the value is in the conduct of the exercise, not the result/output.
Now the really hard part is what to do with all this and here we often get into pure human intuition and instinct - we spent millennia developing it, it kept us alive far longer than we ever should have made it, and it still relies on the most complex computer processor in existence. Decision space and decision advantage are at the heart of everything we do.  We can have a zillion scenarios and predictions but it all comes down to “what are we going to do about it?”
In my experience the trick is about positioning for advantage. Where do we park ourselves to be best prepared to react?  And here we can take all the help we can get.  

Absolutely.  All war is sacrifice.  I use that term deliberately and it does not mean to simply be willing to "give something up".  Sacrifice actually means "to make holy" or "sacred".  This is a point Clausewitz completely missed.  War is extremely personal as we literally sacrifice people for something bigger.  The real question is just how much we believe in that "bigger" thing.  This is more than "cost", it is the fundamental changes that happen at both macro and micro cultural levels as a result of any war.
Ukraine is sacrificing - making holy costs - in defence of their ability to be free to chose their own future.  Russia is sacrificing - making unholy costs - in defence of some false vision/narrative being sold to them by a kleptocrate and his cronies to stay in power. Sacrifice negotiates with Certainty, now whose certainty is more righteous?
No society can withstand endless sacrifice without breaking.  However, when I see Ukrainian boys holding wooden rifles better than a lot of western soldiers, I can only see a society that has a pretty deep cultural zeitgeist right now - killing Russians.  The Ukraine that went into this war, will not be the one that comes out.  Russia and Putin have likely created a regional power pole in all this that will change the face of Eastern Europe, just to add to the bafflingly bad strategic outcomes they constructed in all this.   
However, after all that we are back to "when does it end?"  Well I think that is directly tied to the point when the Sacrifice gets close enough to the Certainty.  Kherson was painful.  There will be other operations that are just as painful.  Hell we may see a Ukrainian defeat before this is all over.  But to my mind, the average Russian's ability to "change the channel" is waning everyday - e.g. a lot of the middle-class Russian's left.  And the Russian Sacrifice-to-Certainty equation is very different then Ukraine's - time is not on Russia's side. 
This war will end when Ukraine and the West have won enough, and Russia has lost enough.  A lot of people post that "this war will end when Putin decides", or "it will end when Ukraine decides" - this is incorrect.  A war is a living breathing entity, it carries its own weight and influence.  History is filled with wars that should have stopped but didn't.  Or ones where the job was not finished but stopped anyway.  Wars have stopped on executive decision.  They have stopped on broader public decision.  They have also stopped because of weather events and eclipses.
In the end this war will end when it makes sense to end it. The "making sense" part is the hardest thing to determine as it is filled with relative rationality, emotion, power, culture, relationships and human failings/strengths.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope it will be better than the previous one for everyone.

Merry Christmas to you all and especially those Ukrainian troops in those cold trenches and foxholes.
Merry Christmas!