Military Outcome of Ukraine

 From a purely military perspective, I believe and hope that the Russians are testing the concept of using the thermonuclear threat as a shield to enable them to punch above their weight in a type of power politics aggressive warfare that typified the late 19th century to World War I, and which Hitler tried to carry to an ultimate extreme in World War II. I say I hope this because, whether it's Putin or others smarter than he is in the Russian military and government, their lesson should be that this cannot work. The shield works both ways. Their incursion into Ukraine has undermined their geopolitical position rather than strengthened it, and cost them at least two decades of progress. I hate autocracies and kleptocratic systems, but my point is entirely military: they are failing in their aggressive war against Ukraine, and have united and strengthened their opponents to an extent that they obviously did not anticipate at all. Even if they manage to fight to a stalemate and a long occupation of the East, they will have suffered a serious setback and reduced their overall position geopolitically, probably for more than a generation. And, somewhere, somehow, sometime, Putin will be deposed and castigated in his own country for this failure.