The term you’re looking for is Pyrrhic victory. e.g. spending 9 months and losing 10s of thousands of soldiers to advance 3km.
More ‘victories’ of this nature will require the Russians to refurbish even more of their 70 year old T-55s and send them to the front.
Nope, I know what a Pyrrhic victory is. Take some time to understand how Russia fights war. Forgive me as I do not recall the Russian term for it but basically they follow a drawn out engagement tenet, wear the opponent down.
The west prefers a quick win and this is not happening in Ukraine. Given all the western media declarations of how Russia is “losing” and instead they take a major strategic city, one would at least be wise to consider perhaps it is not as our media presents it.
Or put another way Occam’s Razor might apply here. The simplest explanation may be the right one, Russia is not losing near as much as we are being told, if at all.
There seems to be a lot of special pleading and strained logic used in explaining how Ukraine is crushing the Russian forces and at the same time losing ground to Russia at every turn.