Re casualties, even the official Russian numbers are not good, if you take them at face value. Iraqi Freedom cost 173 American dead in 6 weeks. The Russian KIA count was 500 several days ago, a week after the invasion began. That is literally 18x the US rate on a weekly basis. And the Russians have (until Ukraine is pacified and absorbed) less than 1/2 the US population. In per capita terms, the Russians are taking roughly 40x the punishment per week that the US did in Iraq.
The US lost under 20 men a day in Vietnam. The Russians are losing 70 men a day in Ukraine. And that’s just the official Russian numbers. If you multiply by 2 to account for the usual Russian fiddling with numbers that gave Putin his $200b piggy bank ...
At minimum, morale might soon be a problem. Russians fought like demons in WWII for their lives. The Nazis literally wanted to kill them all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
Whereas other Russian wars have triggered mutinies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Russian_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution
In this kind of war 500 isn’t all that many. We lost that many just at Omaha Beach.
“The Nazis literally wanted to kill them all”
So did Stalin. He had his version of the KGB behind the troops so that if any of them tried to retreat, they would be shot.