My worry is we have been hearing these kinds of predictions for a while, the Russians will run out of men, the Russians have run out of missiles, they are running out of tanks, that the Ukrainians will turn the tide and start clawing back their territory but so far the Russians are still inching forward.
Well, they are clearly struggling on all those fronts that you mentioned, and partly is why their gains have been so slow for the last couple of months.
Manpower deficit has been a problem for a while, that's why you see them desperately conscripting people from the separatist regions, raising the military age to 65, and hiring reservists, veterans, and mercenaries on massive wages, compared to their regular salaries. We have also been seeing increasing older models of tanks, trucks, and infantry fighting vehicles, into the fold, which shows a shortage in modern equipment.
There's also been reported considerably fewer high-precision strikes on Ukrainian military targets, which is probably why we're seeing them strike shopping malls instead. They have also been going through Belarus artillery stock, which is probably of worse quality and badly maintained, so one could presume they are not exactly rich on that either.
And yes they are inching forward, but mostly in a specific part of the Donbas, at a crawl, and taking lots of damage. In other parts like in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, even on Snake Island, they have actually been run back. The most important thing in an attrition war like this is not how much territory one can gain, but how much attrition can one force take before it breaks. At the moment it doesn't seem like any of the two forces are close to that, but in my honest opinion, in the long run, I see Russia having much more problems sustaining this war than Ukraine, as long as western support continues as it is. If western support starts to slow down and some countries backing down, then I will start to worry a lot about the future of Ukraine.
Another point in favour of Ukraine's future in the war. While they are getting an increasingly more modern weapon from the west, Russia is relying on increasing older technology. One can only suspect that will eventually have a big impact on the battlefield.
