Ukraine

i’m sure they wanted the world to believe that the force they’re exerting on Ukraine is but a fractional whisper of their “true power”,

When Russia invaded they used massive amounts of people and material, including naval and air support. It was very obvious that Russia came in force, to make Ukraine give up without a fight. They had several VDV forces attack Kyiv to capture Zelensky, and massive convoys of armed forces driving towards the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Kyiv_convoy

i do wonder just how much of their combat capacity they’ve dumped into invading ukraine.

They clearly attempted to display overwhelming power, and Russians have used everything they have, including their most expensive equipment and missiles. There is no doubt that early on, Russia tried to win a quick and decisive victory with overwhelming force. And they have continued to apply as much pressure on Ukraine as they possibly can.

The only options they have left that I can see, is to either use nukes, which is unlikely because the consequences would be devastating for Russia too, and the other is to push more cannon fodder on the front lines.

Russia still has a large airforce, the navy outside the Black Sea has also not been hit and the nukes also still work. All of that is with an army, which is clearly able to fight a large scale war. Obviously they are so far failing to take a country with a quarter of the Russian population, but they are clearly able to fight.

What this does do is destroy the massive Soviet era weapons stockpile, it hurts the Russian economy and kills a lot of the willing fighting age men. If Putin is removed and Russia and the war ends, chance are that Russia ends up in a huge economic crisis, with a lot more of its talent leaving the country, massive cuts in military spending and the demographic crisis becoming even worse. It probably means a lot of infighting, maybe even a civil war, but certainly a lot of crime. However Russia as an entity will survive this and will remain a threat to Europe, as long as its culture does not change.