Ukrainians say their overall casualty "exchange rate" is about three Russians for every one Ukrainian and that can increase to 10 Russians for every Ukrainian in the Russian "Meat Wave" style assaults used to capture cities like Bakhmut (2023) and Avdiivka (2024).
Some estimates say Russia's serious casualties taking Avdiivka totaled 16,000 and total land area captured by Russians in 2024 is in the range of 16 square miles (out of around 200,000 square miles of remaining Ukrainian territory), that's roughly 1,000 Russian soldiers lost for every square mile conquered.
Regardless, given Ukraine's estimates of over 400,000 Russian serious casualties, that still makes Ukraine's numbers horrendous for them.
With Ukraine's population of maybe 35 million, of whom perhaps 25 million are military age, such numbers must mean that every family has lost someone close.
Of course, sadly, Ukrainians have no choice because unlike Russians, they can't just go home.
If Ukrainians lose, they die, and their country is destroyed.
So, they have to keep fighting, regardless of what anybody else thinks of them.
For Vlad the Invader's Russians... well... the Ukraine War is still only two years old, with only 400,000 casualties -- that's vastly more than Russia's invasion of Afghanistan (circa 80,000 casualties) -- but still vastly less than the 3 million dead in three years of the First World War or the 25 million dead in almost six years of the Second World War.
On the other hand, it very likely matters to Russians themselves that, Vlad's endless nonsense about "expanding NATO" notwithstanding, nobody actually invaded Russia or wants any of Russia's 2012 territories.
So, maybe Russians' tolerances for mayhem, death and destruction are not quite as high as they were 110 or 85 years ago.
I guess we'll find out.
As for your fixation on mythical "hopium", it's not good to lose hope: