It’s not safe to say that at all. They’ve abandoned 2 major objectives and have lost tens of thousands of troops. Morale is at rock bottom. It will be very difficult to pull off a general mobilization in Russia, especially in Moscow.
Russia doesn’t have strong strategic bombardment capabilities, nor even air superiority. They’re also running out of military hardware needed to make use of. Their shitty 80 year old tanks are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Again, yes, Russia could go all out. They could launch nukes. But it’s something that would be very difficult. Putin may not survive if he tries to mobilize Moscow.
Which two objectives? They got their land bridge for Crimea and are almost fully in control of the Donbas. They also have ensured Ukraine can't join NATO now, unless they want to officially cede all of that land to Russia in exchange for peace, since a requirement to join NATO is that a country be in control of their borders.
From a logical standpoint, why would they want Kyiv and western Ukraine? 90% of the natural resources are in the east in addition to the reasons stated above for wanting control of those areas.
Ukraine being able to (at least temporarily) push the Russians from Kharkiv was huge for them, while the attack on Kyiv always seemed like just a list of targets that Russia just wanted to take out early on. Of course, I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes so who really knows.
This was true before the start of the current war in February, and had been true since 2014.
Said war has made NATO making some sort of exception for rump Ukraine as member significantly more likely to happen.
You tell me. Russia certainly tried to seize Kyiv in the opening days of the invasion. I think that bloody action carries more weight as a statement of intent, than your question does. Also, I think you were aware of it.
It's not exactly unrelated.
> and there is nothing outside of our ... media to suggest they ever planned to occupy the entire country.
Except for you know, the entire invasion. This is sophistry, and weak as well.
This claim is doing its rounds starting from the day one. This being the 100th day...
...maybe you're talking about the morale of all those dudes sheltering in Georgia and Turkey?
The fact that morale has been low since the start is not evidence that it’s higher now. Russia’s performance has been consistently poor
I don't think you are qualified to read Russia's military bloggers. They usually write things such as "in this and that division, there are such and such problems". How does that translate to your claim that morale (of whom? of everybody?) being at rock bottom (for how long?)