Putin is desperate to find a way to "win" this war or salvage some kind of victory, and it is not happening. At this point, they, according to reliable reports have lost over 40,000 dead and literally billions of dollars/rubles of ordnance and the full impact of the western armaments is just beginning to be felt. The Russian military has called up former soldiers who are in their 60;s, sent "soldiers" into battle with a week or less of training (some do not know how to reload their guns), brought in the Wagner group (openly Nazi complete with tattoos) and mercenaries from Chechnya and anywhere they can find them. The Ukrainian forces appear to be recapturing one or two villages every day and the ultimate prize is the city of Kherson which is strategically important. The Russian fleet in the Black Sea have retreated to about 200 km away from Ukrainian shores and the Ukrainian navy will soon take delivery of several guided missile frigates. And in the devastated city of Mariupol, Ukrainian partisans are harassing and killing Russian troops in urban guerilla warfare.
The sanctions have devastated the Russian economy and all this reminds me of a line from Dr. Zhivago, "Germans underestimated Russian capacity for suffering"