Russia is firebombing Ukraine.

[Emrys]

44. Today's bombings demonstrate Putin's weakness.

He doesn't have a stock of precision munitions, so he's reduced to ill-aimed saturation attacks on civilian populations, under the guise of aiming for strategic infrastructure targets (which he's largely missed even when his missiles have not been intercepted by the Ukrainians - about 50% got through at last count), partly because he has to be seen to be doing something, but there's relatively little militarily he can do effectively, for some of the reasons you've pointed out.

Part of his desperation is that severe cracks are appearing in the Russian Federation. Or, to be more accurate, cracks that were already there are becoming more obvious to the point where he won't be able to ignore them much longer. There's also the fact that his own leadership position is on a very shoogly peg.

If it's a bet about which collapses first, my money would be on the Russian Federation rather than any Western/European alliance. And I'd be willing to bet pretty big.