These wars are really military engagements with directional objectives rather than truly existential wars with binary outcomes.
Modern wars really resemble Rome’s Germanic wars more than the Punic ones.
With the exception of extreme cases like Gaza, it doesn't get more binary than that.
I also think that for Putin it is pretty existential. Otherwise, they would have negotiated a temporary deal, took the pretty large amount of land that they had taken at the end of 2022. Work on another 'project' like Georgia for a few years, do a lot of disinformation campaigns in Europe in the meanwhile and then revisit Ukraine later. That would have a lot of benefits, like no reaming of Europe, no development of Ukraine's capabilities (resulting in a drastic drop in refinement capabilities), etc.
But he couldn't. It would make him look weak and would make him vulnerable to a coup. Continuing is the only way for him.
2014: seize Crimea (success, although it no longer serves any purpose) and Sevastopol (total failure, Sevastopol can no longer serve the Russian black sea fleet, and when it comes to the other goal: keep NATO out of the black sea, it's an even bigger failure. Russia has lost control of the skies above the black sea completely and are losing control over the sea of Azov, by withdrawing air defenses. Now go look on the map where the sea of Azov is to see the magnitude of this failure), prevent Ukraine from approaching NATO and EU (complete failure is putting it very mildly), keep Ukraine unstable (succeeded, until Euromaidan revolution, ie. actually this is a failure)
2022: maintain control over Crimea (looks to be failing, as in Ukraine still controls Crimea's water supply), build a land bridge to Crimea (successfull, except that they can't use their land bridge for anything), seize control over Ukraine's government ("denazify" Ukraine), demilitarize Ukraine (as in Ukraine accepts no to have an army. Obviously total and complete failure), and prevent Ukraine and others from coming closer to NATO (obviously total failure, and not just in Ukraine)
In June 2026, ie. about 4 weeks ago, Russia once again confirmed these goals.
Oh and they were going to do this in 3 days. Then in 3 weeks. Then in 2 months. Then they stopped making predictions. Today is day 1608 of their 3-day attempt.
The judgment was the basis of the invasion. Lukashenko and state TV did however say it; more interestingly the Biden administration - which had access to internal discussion and wrongly credited the cognition and rationality of Russian bureaucrats - also/ affirmed it.
In fact victory was assumed to have happened instantly: the famous widely mocked hundreds of miles of stalled trucks in the opening week contained //no military equipment//: it was all police equipment for managing recalcitrants in Kiev. Why? Because the war was ‘always already’ won; it was just a question of taking possession. The basic structure they falsely thought they had imposed everywhere did more or less materialize and work in the SE
I'd say neither is an attractive choice.
Trumps stupid war on Iran on the other hand is really just some air strikes, and Iran can win by just not losing, which is easy, because the US will not invade.
Russias attitude towards Ukraine has turned borderline genocidal since the start of this war.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...
Children are routinely taken from parents and shipped off to Russia. Parents are encarcerated, conscripted, or slaughtered.
By some counts there have already been at least a million casualties in the Ukraine war, and in Gaza there is probably 100,000 casualties now (military + civilian). And, the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo over the decades have produced about 5–5.4 million casualties, although accumulated over decades rather than in a single war.
So modern conflicts may be lower intensity and lest existential, but they can be every bit as deadly.
I'd rather trust the Nytimes and the UK intelligence who have confirmed these losses, than some random website pushing an agenda.
By hey, if it makes you happy to create you own reality, you do you.
As for the NYT, read Ashley Rindsberg's "The Gray Lady Winked."
And British intelligence? Okay then. Let me chortle into my single malt.
Flawed data.
Jan 29th: 1000 - 38 Feb 26th: 1000 - 35 Apr 9th: 1000 - 41 May 15th: 526 - 41 Jun 18th: 522 - 33 Jul 16th: 501 - 31
Total: 4549 - 219
While YouTube is full of videos of miles and miles of Ukrainian graveyards.
No need to use the Wikipedia excuse.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "easily", but Putin could very much just say "fuck this" and turn off the war machine in one day and it's not at all clear to me that there would be much consequential blowback other than the personal humiliation of one man.
Would other countries now decide to attack Russia? Of course not. Would the oligarchs flip out and have him assassinated? No. Would the West disassemble the sanctioning apparatus? Eventually.
But the real downside is just simple humiliation and to prevent that, they will continue sacrificing young men.
Politics is a fucked up game.