I respectfully disagree and I continue to believe a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine should be the answer for the sake of everyone. The intelligence I am getting from Russia open sources is the opposite of your perspective, with a "North Korea" like siege mentality building in Russia. Like you, I hope I am wrong. And like you, I also hope that nukes are not on the distant horizon anywhere. But the Russian people feel directly impacted. You attack their television states, their economy, their utilities, etc., and those involved in that escalation have encouraged more of the Russian people to fight. I understand that Russia invaded Ukraine, and therefore... etc.
But psychologically, it is one thing to criticize from abroad and another thing to go after civilians and civilian organizations directly in Russia. Of course, they "won't like it," anymore than the suffering people in the Ukraine invasion do. But it changes the thinking from an "exercise," "foreign war," "bad foreign policy move," etc. to a direct threat to the people. And IMO every one of the Western analysts and media who predict the fall of Russia leadership and its government, will only make the Russian people more determined and intractable on Ukraine. Western analysts and media think that such talk will "demoralize" Russian people, through Information Warfare. I believe they have significantly miscalculated on this, and it will have the exact opposite affect.
To be clear, personally I do not like, I do not support, and I do not agree with Russia and its leadership, in any way. But I believe it is important to understand our enemies as well as our friends. Over the past century, the Russian people have gone through massive changes, world wars that literally attacked and destroyed their mainland (not only an island base), massive deaths, the Communist party fiasco, and one disaster after another. It would be hard to imagine a Russian citizen having a positive view of the past hundred years, and certainly the capitalist view of subjecting Russians to "lack" of things will do some damage to some people. But if we look at history, the Russian people are used to struggle, lack, even suffering. What they are not used to - whether we like it or not - is the idea of giving up on their national pride. I believe the matter of Russian national pride (right or wrong) is something too many Western analysts are underestimating. If the West and USA really want to fight with Russia, I expect Russia will hit first and hit hard. And sad to say, I believe much of their public would support that. I believe there are too many in Russia who are spoiling for a fight and would love to take West and USA down - no matter the cost. Pride can be a dangerous thing.
Especially in the USA, I also believe there is a lack of perspective as to how physically large Russia is as a land mass. It may have diversity among its peoples (like all nations), but they have more places to evacuate more people to, with half the USA population.
