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Thank you for clarifying. I think I have a better grasp of your argument now.

First, I'll try to offer a clarification of my own; when I talk about Russia's preference for rapid breakthrough operations, I've been using the term "doctrine" very specifically. What you're describing is not doctrine, but strategy. Doctrine is neither strategy, nor tactics, but it informs and guides both. I don't disagree that the current Russian strategy is one of disposable conscript assaults, but I suspect that strategy largely arises from the failures of their doctrine in the face of the realities of the conflict, and is not as deliberate a choice as you seem to think. I don't think there's really a way for either of us to be proven right here, as we'd need to be in the room with the Russian generals to say for sure.

Most FPV drone kills are not first strikes against moving troops. They are more often used to to prevent recovery of a disabled vehicle or to finish off someone who’s wounded.

I've read the linked account previously. It's an excellent and informative read, but it's value is deeply limited. Unfortunately, I can't provide many of the countervailing sources that I have access to, because I'm working from direct conversations with people with significant expertise and first hand knowledge, as opposed to documentary sources. I get that that's a claim anyone could make, and I'll freely acknowledge that I have no way to back it up. Trust me or don't, your call. But basically Jakub is speaking from a very limited, anecdotal view of the battlefield. His account may well be true for where he was stationed and what he was doing, but the broader statistics have shown that FPV drones have become the primary source of battlefield casualties, on both sides. This doesn't mean they're the primary mode of attack, per se, but they are the mode that is most consistent in creating casualties. This article from Kyiv Post covers it well, and while I don't consider them an unbiased source, the statistics cited actually come directly from the Russian MOD, and I can't see any value to them in lying about this; overstating the effectiveness of Ukraine's drones would, if anything, make Russia look worse here. According to Russian figures only 20% of battlefield casualties are caused by artillery, and only 4% by small arms. This pretty directly contradicts the claims Jakub makes in his account. I think it also largely speaks to how the war has more or less become a stalemate. Attacks from both sides are limited; even the Russian "human waves" aren't so much waves as very small groups of soldiers, as Gen. Ben Hodges describes in the video I linked earlier.

Don’t forget the context: I replied to a comment saying that Russia could never threaten another country because it was struggling so much in Ukraine. I don’t mean that it’s “slowly winning” to mean, “I am very confident that, without other changes, Russia will win, but it will just take many years.” I mean that Russia is advancing, able to maintain an effective fighting force and remains a real threat.

OK, so more broadly here, I think there's actually a lot we agree on. Yes, it would be deeply foolish to see Russia as a paper tiger, and yes, regardless of where we differ on Russia's state of play in Ukraine, the fact remains that they are certainly able to maintain an effective fighting force outside of that conflict, and would absolutely be able to prosecute additional limited conflicts (we'll get to that in a moment) while maintaining their position in Ukraine. But there are reasons for that that I think undermine some of your argument.

Basically, the problem for Russia is that they're not really able to fully commit to the war in Ukraine. This isn't a "total war" for them, and Putin lacks the ability to convince the Russian public that it should be treated as one. That's a key difference between Russia and Ukraine right now. The Ukrainian people will accept significant hardship if it means victory, because victory is the only path to survival. But for Russia, this war is Putin's nation building project, and maybe a chance to flex a bit and show off their prowess on the world stage. The average Russian isn't ideologically committed to the conflict, and isn't about to accept, say, food rationing in order to win this fight. Thus, while it's true that a significant portion of Russia's overall military capability remains at their disposal, that's because it is politically untenable for them to use it. Even their apparently endless manpower isn't truly endless; conscription waves come at a significant cost, both in terms of political capital (Russian elections may be a fraud, but dictators still only rule because people allow them to, as many kings and tyrants have learned throughout history; Putin is a keen student of history and painfully aware of this fact), and in terms of the economic impact of sending a generation of young men to die in a war instead of allowing them to contribute to your workforce. These costs are growing unsustainable for Russia, and as Ukraine's strikes on their gas refining capabilities continue to bite that will only grow worse.

While I agree that Russia could, in theory, commit significant resources to a wider conflict, there would need to be a reason for them to do so. This is why I say that Russia would have the ability to prosecute additional limited conflicts. That rules out almost every potential target they have at present; an invasion of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Turkey, or Japan would be a total war with all of NATO, and that's a fight that they would lose. Without the ability to conjure up some existential threat that would make such a war seem completely necessary to the Russian people, there's simply no way for Putin to move in that direction without facing down a full scale public revolt. Either in the short term or the long term it would guarantee the collapse of their government, either because NATO marches on Moscow or their own people do. I'm not saying this lightly; I have friends and loved ones who would likely be the very first in the line of fire if Putin did decide to open up a broader conflict. But I simply do not see a realistic version of events where a broader war with NATO is something that Putin can risk.