Putin will lose the war if nothing changes radically: you can tell the final outcome in wars relatively early on; and, indeed, it is a truism in military strategy that wars are won in the peace—the choices made in preparation and planning during peacetime ultimately decide the outcome of a war; a war is just like “running the simulation” to see how it all works out—when you start the simulation there is not much you can do.
Those tedious but highly realistic turn-based war games for Acorn computers played by autistic men named Clive who worked for something called “Resources, Planning, and Development” captured the situation very well. You basically spend eight hours fiddling with your oil supplies and logistics settings in Excel-style account columns and then press “commence campaign” and the computer throws the dice and in 30 seconds announces—“Your forces have been DECIMATED at the Fulda Gap. The Politburo sentences you to thirty years in a gulag”. Unlike you whippersnappers, we had none of that “real-time strategy” in my day, no you don’t know what war is until you spend ten hours poring over the accompanying documents—printed in microdot—to work out if your Panzer Mk. IV column has enough fuel to reach El Alamein (etc etc—I’m not that old, it’s just I had friends with fathers like that). In other words, those autistic fiddly war games were realistic, whereas just lassoing your tanks and clicking on an enemy tank formation to attack it is degenerate.
Anyway, as it stands Putin will lose the war. As usual in life, the problem will be terrible ructions in the rear—specifically, there are already protests against Putin’s unpopular conscription process. These protests—with somewhat over a thousand people arrested across Russia—represent a much wider current of opinion than the actual bodies on the streets (every protester could be said to represent the views of ten other people, every person arrested represents another ten who are very strongly against the war).
The protesters are mostly young urban professionals; in other words, they represent the middle class—the same influential people who will have been financially and socially (holidays) squeezed by sanctions and also look to the West as sophisticated and high status (and will be revolted by Putin’s alliance with Iran, a country where women are clubbed to death for not wearing the veil). It is from this nucleus that Putin could be toppled from within—as the CIA will encourage. At the moment, the possibility is a little dark cloud on the horizon—as the casualties stack up, it will become thunderous (disaffected Russian elites will be tempted to use this nucleus to topple Putin).
The Ukraine has better morale than Russia, unlimited financial support from the West, and better technology: Russia cannot hurt America, America can hurt Russia through support to the Ukraine—ergo, Russia will lose. However, the West has made a mistake: they have announced that if Putin uses nuclear weapons in the Ukraine, they will only respond conventionally. Hence Putin should nuke Kiev; to destroy or capture an opponent’s capital is considered a victory condition in war—the Russians have sufficient military intelligence to know when Zelensky is in the capital and the Ukraine is unlikely to have any continuity of government arrangements. Nuke Kiev and the government will collapse—along with all organised resistance. The West has already stated—and governments are consistent with such statements—that they will only offer a conventional retaliation for a tactical strike. This is an acceptable trade off (if they even risk it at all)—Russia could absorb the US cruise missile strikes in exchange for the Ukraine.
Wouldn’t it make Putin look like a monster? Look, he’s already a monster. You’ve seen the pictures of a girl with her legs blown off, just because she was queuing at a station—you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. What about the morality? If the war continues for, say, another two years many more people will die—possibly 100,000s—than would be killed in a tactical nuclear strike on Kiev. Conclusion: Putin should drop a tactical nuke on Kiev before he suffers a coup at home. This gambit is the only option for victory—short of serendipity; and it has been made possible because the West has foolishly announced its retaliation level for a nuclear strike on the Ukraine; if they had kept it ambiguous, kept a nuclear response on the table, this would not be an option. Unfortunately, the truth is Putin is not “Vlad the Impaler”—he is too nice to drop the bomb.