Russia’s biggest mistake was playing Vietnam with these guys.
From a military point of view, I agree. I do believe that the RF was somewhat constrained militarily, though, because it had to consolidate markets and acquire new ones to counter sanctions. That, in turn, involved having to bring China,India, and the Global South to the RF side, at least implicitly. China, in particular, is sensitive to anything that encourages secession movements. Samarkand resolved that, and the Kerch Bridge incident provided a very public reason for going after Ukrainian infrastructure.