To be honest, I don't really care what happens with Putin. I mean, I wish only the worst for him, but someone like him or even worse is just going to take his place anyway unless something changes more profoundly within Russia. It's actually scary that he might be one of the less problematic people that could be leading Russia, since he seems to be wary and even indecisive in his moves. What he's brilliant at is consolidating his power, but I haven't seen much else where he actually excels at.

Russian major general who was very corrupt has been unalived

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russian-army-major-general-klimenko-killed-in-ukraine/

Russian chopper has been terminated

https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1854590050165538822

Ukraine reportedly shoots down Su-34

https://defence-blog.com/ukrainian-f-16-reportedly-shoots-down-second-russian-su-34/

I think that Putin's legacy will be defined by Ukraine and he'll be judged quite negatively for the enormous amount of deaths that have occurred in order to take the country, regardless how much territory he gains in the end.  

I imagine that the West will try to influence Russia from within to make the country more democratic, and to give the people more of a voice, so that fewer situations like this happen.  

This would seem quite pertinent.  

Cliffs:  The video explains that the war with Ukraine will go on because Russia has decided to press on regardless of losses.  Russia has to do this because a significant recession will occur when Russia has to retool back to a civilian economy where regular goods are produced instead of the focus on military stuff as is the case now.  

According to the author of the video, China will invade in 2027 as they realize that there won't be anything stopping them now that the United States has Trump in office.

And imho, while Trump is officially an isolationist, he is conveniently doing this in order to bend to the will of China and Russia.  We've really screwed ourselves over by letting Trump in.  

At the rate of Russian losses that has taken place lately, the total may be 750K by the end of the year.   

I am going to piggyback on this post in light of the German government being about to be dissolved notably before the scheduled September 2025 election.

So a day after Trump won, the German coalition broke for good after a long time of struggles. This paves the way for earlier elections which could in theory happen as soon as mid-January 2025. But Scholz has decided that he won't ask the "Vertrauensfrage" to the parliament before January; if the majority of the parliament distrusts him to continue to lead the country (and it's certain that it will go that way), new elections have to happen within 60 days. So Scholz's stubbornness will drag this out for another two months, pushing the date of the election into March. Another instance of lack of decisiveness that will cost Ukraine. The EU has been paralyzed for months by choosing to wait until the US elections, now Germany extends this whole thing.

The next point to make is that Friedrich Merz is bound to win the election with his party sitting at 33% in the most recent poll, way ahead of Scholz's SPD at 17%. So it's pretty much set who Germany's next chancellor will be, but what does this mean for Ukraine? Not much at all, I'm afraid. Because when Merz was going up against Scholz's refusal to give Taurus to Ukraine, he pushed for a vote in the parliament twice and on both occasions his own party had a sizeable number of representatives who voted against it.

The disheartening conclusion is that an opposition leader can talk big all he wants without needing anything to back it up. Germany is also steering towards a CDU+SPD coalition as its next government, so increased support for Ukraine is a pipe dream.

If taking Ukraine at immense cost is the high point of Putin's reign, he probably won't be remembered as a great leader but perhaps only a good one by his people (and possibly not so outside Russia). But if it leads to something greater for Russia, Putin's legacy could well be considered greater too. Sadly I don't think the Russian people are going to be too bothered by the immense losses, as long as something notable is achieved with those losses.