Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The singular advantage an autocrat like putin has is he can wait out the democracies of the west. He also heavily controls the home narrative. Democracies are sensitive to changes in public moods, even if it's just a general fatigue about the war and they're exposed to far more narratives. When people start to blame inflation etc on the war(and putin has been pushing this since early on for obvious reasons), that fatigue will grow. The Kremlin can leave that on the long finger for their own people for far longer and have more methods to quieten it down.

Russia is also a major exporter of food and energy so Russians won't go cold or hungry anytime soon(similar sanctions on somewhere like China would have really hurt on those two scores). While their gas exports (to Europe, majority of their previous market)have fallen off a cliff, they're still bringing enough in from oil to finance the war, at least currently. Outside the major urban centres Russians live far more frugal lives than the average say German. I'd be willing to bet a fair chunk of their deeply rural population barely noticed there's a war on(unless their non pale sons were called up).

As it stands Ukraine is screwed for the currently foreseeable because of Russia. Their agri sector is buggered, industry what there was of it, ditto and they've had a huge number of people leave westward and eastward when they were already facing a Russia style demographic purgatory. That's before the numbers killed and crippled by Russia. For over a year my understandably negative view was that Russia would 'keep' Donbas, Crimea wasn't even on the table, but the part up for grabs was the land bridge between the two. Sadly unless there's a massive upset I fear they'll hang onto that too.

Russia's next move? Odessa is major thing and goal for them and always has been. I could see them consolidate the front they have with the usual minefields and use the sheer numbers advantage of men and materiel they have over Ukraine to make a push there.

Russia's future? Cold war 2. Shut out and off from "The West", encouraging contact with the usual corrupt types in the developing world, while China and India will play both sides(wisely for their nations). In the parts of Ukraine they hold? They're facing decades of sectarian conflict even though they will try to in essence genocide Ukrainian loyalists and plant as many Russians they can and generations of Ukrainians that hate them. They claim Ukraine doesn't exist as a separate nation and people, but like all imperialist fcukwits with no sense of history or self awareness, they've only gone and created the Ukrainian people and nation with this war.