Russia has been a winner by basically no metric other than land and being a shit neighbor.
And even land cost them more in soldiers more than the pre-war population that lived there; it's literally a special grave digging operation. Soviet stockpiles of armor are basically depleted; now it's the buggy and moped meta. They've completely failed to support their supposed allies (i.e. Assad, Iran, Armenia). A good chunk of their strategic aviation fleet is gone. Car bombings of generals continue all over Russia and occupied territories, which brings the question, will it even stop if they "win"? They've finally been demoted from being an aircraft carrier operating nation. Their frozen assets are literally killing Russian soldiers. National wealth fund has ~20-30% of the prewar assets. Something similar in gold reserves. Interest rates are beyond effed, and recruits are largely joining for the money needed in the terrible economy caused by Putin himself. Who annexed 4 oblasts only to legally deploy the 18 year olds Putin promised not to deploy in Ukraine (as it's no longer Ukraine in Russian law). Non-military industrial output is on a steady decline. Price capping on bread. Fossil fuel output at minimums, and with low prices.
Since the last big movements of the front that's absolutely been the case, though you're right it doesn't apply if you account for the early captures. Once you remove them (Mariupol, Melitopol, Berdyansk), that's very easily verifiable.
Avdiivka had 30-32k pre-war population, estimated 40-47k Russian casualties.
Bakhmut had 71k pre-war, Russia suffered an estimated 75k casualties from Wagner alone.
Pokrovsk 61k pre-war, ongoing, 21k estimated casualties in January alone, and it's been ongoing for a year.
And beyond cities, the daily casualty rates at most obtain tiny settlements of a few dozen pre-war inhabitants. In the worst case you have the North Kharkiv front with 10s of thousands of casualties and basically a stalemate.
>It's hard to take the rest of your comments seriously.
"One thing is debatable so everything is debatable", I didn't expect this level on HN.
And even land cost them more in soldiers more than the pre-war population that lived there; it's literally a special grave digging operation. Soviet stockpiles of armor are basically depleted; now it's the buggy and moped meta. They've completely failed to support their supposed allies (i.e. Assad, Iran, Armenia). A good chunk of their strategic aviation fleet is gone. Car bombings of generals continue all over Russia and occupied territories, which brings the question, will it even stop if they "win"? They've finally been demoted from being an aircraft carrier operating nation. Their frozen assets are literally killing Russian soldiers. National wealth fund has ~20-30% of the prewar assets. Something similar in gold reserves. Interest rates are beyond effed, and recruits are largely joining for the money needed in the terrible economy caused by Putin himself. Who annexed 4 oblasts only to legally deploy the 18 year olds Putin promised not to deploy in Ukraine (as it's no longer Ukraine in Russian law). Non-military industrial output is on a steady decline. Price capping on bread. Fossil fuel output at minimums, and with low prices.
So what is Russia winning at?