For serious discussion - like your thoughts beyond simple "Russians go home" platitudes. What even is a russian theory of victory at this point?
First off - this STILL seems to be a war where their only goal is conquest and capitulation of the Ukrainian government to a Russian puppet one. But - how do they intend realize that?
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Terroristic bombings against civilian targets from standoff distance has never, ever been successful at defeating an industrial society. It's way, way way too expensive to maintain and doesn't hold ground.
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Russia's mechanized forces in mass have largely been wiped out and is cost-ineffective compared to Ukraine's ability to stop them with drones.
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Russia's infantry tactics is literally sending in small infiltration teams into forward areas, where they are eventually either droned, sniped, mined, shelled or outright counter attacked and killed.
Ukraine seems capable of increasingly automating their defense AND assualt forces to be less manpower intensive, and able to trade a little bit of land temporarily until they can kill the infiltration teams that bum rush positions in cars, motorbikes or on foot. The latter is NOT a serious or effective strategy for occupying and pacifying conquered land.
In the big picture - Russia seems to just be prolonging the slaughter and hoping to be given something in return to make it stop. But - that doesn't seem likely to work. No serious minded thinkers expect Russia to honor any agreement, so why WOULDN'T Ukraine logically look at the stiatuion and conclude that the ONLY way to stop future russian aggression is to bleed out their army until there is fundamental change in Russian political leadership.
How does Russia 'win' this war? It's hard to see. Things feel very endgame, but also stagnant since life of their soldiers means absolutely nothing to the Kremlin, when they probably know the alternative is that stopping the war leads quickly and directly to total domestic collapse.
Your thoughts please.
Ukraine could absolutely be fighting a dirtier war than it is. They could be much more aggressive with attacking soft targets in big russian cities, car bombs, shooting up stores, assassinating government figures, blowing up civilian structures. They've already shown a capability and willingness to do this, assassinating Dugin's daughter and some high priority targets here and there over time.
But - unlike the russians, they have allies/supporters who care about moral conduct of a war and an ethical high ground, thus they don't bother with those kinds of attacks at scale. But if Russia were to start using nukes to kill large numbers of Ukrainians in a clear final act (a Final Solution, if you will) of extermination, there would be no reason for them not to fully unleash a terroristic campaign like that.
A tactical nuke is just a big shell - depending on a programmable explosive yield, it might blow up a single building or a few city blocks. Militarily, there isn't a single target that changes the trajectory of the war by being nuked - but politically and strategically, using any level of nuke probably creates way way way more problems for russia than it solves.
Why believe that? Because they clearly didn't use them at points where there were more concentrated Ukrainian defences that might at least at a simple tactical level, have an argument for their use. They could have used them against any number of fortress belt cities where Ukrainians were (or are still) stubbornly entrenched like Bakhmut, Sieverodonetsk, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk, Mynohrad etc, and expect that the Ukrainians would quickly retreat and reconsider their defensive posture for the next town down the road. But - the central contradiction here for Russia is that they insist Ukraine belongs to them - ergo is their property. Why would you nuke your own property, especially with all the other entanglements it presents. This is a war of land seizure by a mafia state looking to steal wealth and treasure from their neighbour. You can't extract value as quickly from a completely decimated moonscape, plus your reconstruction costs are higher.
They're not going to use nukes of any kind. And China probably would pull all support if they did, which would QUICKLY deindustrialize the Russian army to the point where they'd be using slingshots and sticks on meat assaults in a couple of months.
Doing war crimes is bad strategy. It's not free, it doesn't effect enemy military operations and, as we've seen in with Russia's actions in Ukraine, is effective propaganda for the enemy. If the Russian government can provoke Ukraine into it, it's absolutely in their interest to do so.
Because actual Russians care about far more than just winning. There's also degrees of loss, and MAD is a very significant one. I don't know to what degree they're worried about preserving the value of Ukraine as territory at this point, but that would be another consideration, you're right.
Again, it was a very "technically increases chance of victory" kind of answer.
Yep, probably not.