But he seems to be the type that has always ruled with power and will not take a bloodied nose too well. I don't think he has a death wish but we are going to have to have a situation where he doesn't lose as much face which could force him into something stupid.

Here is what I do know for sure:
Russians have been (the last few days) battling the West with intense cyber stuff. No breaches (as of yesterday) but they are going after banks, financial institutions and critical infrastructure pretty hard.

The Russian supply chain cannot support the troops in the field. Ukrainians have been tactically brilliant in luring the Russians into the urban cities and then keeping ambush teams out along the supply routes to keep hitting supply trains. Their inability to use Spetnaz to conduct successful airfield seizures has also denied them the ability to supply by air. However, with the Ukrainians having an abundance of Stingers, not so sure the airfields, if held, could have yielded much.

Ukrainians trained with the Azerbaijianis during their war with Armenia on how to use the Turkish Bayraktars. Whoever put that together for the Ukrainians should receive a medal or two.

As we have seen, there is huge concern that Putin will continue to target civilians to get them to quit and leave the cities. I have a friend in Kyiv who is spending a lot of time in the subway as up until last night, they were under constant siren warnings.

Putin called in reinforcements because he is running out of time due to money, supplies, and the Ukrainians getting more confident and resupplied with NATO weapons. He called in the Chechens (who are truly SOBs and can all rot in hell) and they ran into some problems with Bayraktars on Saturday. He also called on the Kazaks but they turned him down. He needs a huge breakthrough now or this crumbles. Slovenia, Finland and Germany supplied Russian with some key military components and those cannot be resupplied.