The challenges Russia faces in Ukraine fight

 ISW:

The United States can use the enormous challenges Russia will face in 2025 as leverage to secure critical concessions in ongoing negotiations to end the war by continuing and even expanding military support to Ukraine. Russia will likely face a number of materiel, manpower, and economic issues in 12 to 18 months if Ukrainian forces continue to inflict damage on Russian forces on the battlefield at the current rate. Russia's defense industrial base (DIB) cannot sustain Russia's current armored vehicle, artillery system, and ammunition burn rates in the medium-term. Russia's recruitment efforts appear to be slowing such that they cannot indefinitely replace Russia's current casualty rates without an involuntary reserve mobilization, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown great reluctance to order. Putin has mismanaged Russia's economy, which is suffering from increased and unsustainable war spending, growing inflation, significant labor shortages, and reductions in Russia's sovereign wealth fund. These issues will present difficult decision points to Putin in 2026 or 2027 provided current trends continue. Putin thus is likely prioritizing breaking Western and particularly US support to Ukraine in 2025 and securing his desired end state in negotiations, letting him avoid facing the nexus of difficult problems he now confronts. US military aid to Ukraine has let Ukraine drive Russia towards a critical moment when Putin will have to make hard choices. The United States can accelerate the moment when Putin must grapple with these interlocking problems and can likely coerce Russia into making the concessions on its demands necessary to secure a peace acceptable to the United States, Ukraine, and Europe. The United States can achieve a strong negotiating position and negotiate a deal that maximizes American interests by continuing military aid to Ukraine and increasing battlefield pressure on Russia.

Russia will likely face several materiel, manpower, and economic constraints in the coming months that will put pressure on the Kremlin's ability to maintain its war effort in Ukraine in the medium- to long-term — if Russian forces' loss rates in Ukraine continue at the current tempo. Putin planned for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine to last weeks — not years. Putin's false assumptions about Ukraine's ability and willingness to defend its territory led him not to prepare the Russian economy or military recruitment system for a protracted and expensive war with high losses. Putin has failed to make difficult but necessary decisions to create the systems necessary for sustaining a protracted war. Russia's protracted war and high losses on the battlefield are already causing major economic issues in Russia, and these economic problems will likely mature within another 12 to 18 months.

Russian forces have sustained vehicle and artillery system losses on the battlefield that are unsustainable in the medium- to long-term given the limitations of Russia's defense industrial capacity and Soviet-era weapons and equipment stocks....
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There is much more at the link above. 

Russia's war in Ukraine is looking like a mistake.  It thought it would be over in a matter of days if not weeks and it is now bogged down in an unwinnable conflict that has dragged on for years and shows no prospects of a Russian victory at this point.   The war has demonstrated the weakness of Russia's conventional warfare.  Its troops and their equipment have both shown an inability to control the war space. The war has also led to damage to the Russian economy.