Let’s just skip to the last chapter, Vlad ends up keeping his ethnic Russian provinces at the least (Ukraine didn’t want them anyways, judging by the last 8 years of shelling the Donbass)…..at most:
Ukraine 1991-2023
Anything else is just not realistic. This war ends on Vlad’s terms, he still holds all the cards….
“This war ends on Vlad’s terms”
...He takes Kyiv in three days, all NATO troops pull back out of the former Warsaw Pact countries, NATO disintegrates into disarray, and the Ukrainian public overflows with love for Putin.
“he still holds all the cards...”
Except for the revenues from the European energy market, with its coercive power over European policy. (His energy weapon (built over 3/4 century) has been completely lost.)
Or a growing economy, or a budget surplus.
Or anywhere near the conventional combat power that Russia had before the 2022 invasion. Russian fleets of major conventional combat platforms is already over half expended - the better half is gone.
Russia is not just a pariah State, not just the most heavily sanctioned country on Earth - they are now arguably the most heavily sanctioned country in history.
Bottom Line: After the horrors of the systematic planned use of torture came to light in Bucha, the Free World solidified in determination to not let Putin win. That will has only strengthened since then.
The White House just came out and said that the US considers truce in Ukraine unacceptable at the moment. So much for Vlad’s terms.
The counter-offensive is going to launch, and Russian forces are going to have to take that hit, like it or not. It has been resourced far beyond the Operations in Kharkiv and Kherson, which were disastrous for Russian forces.
So far, Russia has basically been contending with the inventories of the former Warsaw Pact - MIGs, T-72 tanks and so on (except for a few hundred howitzers and shoulder fired missiles like Javelins and Stingers). The NATO inventories that were designed to defeat the Soviet Union (whose Military was four times the size of Russia’s), as well as the Warsaw Pact, have largely not yet even entered the fray yet. They are world beating cards that “Vlad” doesn’t hold.
A much higher pain level is on the way for Russian forces during April/May. Russian weapons platforms from the 1960s will be going up against Desert Storm era Western platforms - literally the same Bradley Fighting Vehicles that cut through Soviet style T-72 tanks in Iraq (over 3,000 in 100 hours).