Not only that, but Putin's great propaganda victory, by which he persuaded people that Russia's conventional army was invincible and upon which many of his threats depended, is now completely shattered.
This is the same army that ended up drunk in Afghanistan. It can bully on a small scale but can't run a major conventional war against a determined enemy. Too many problems of trust, communication, logistics and training, leading to a demoralised, poor-performing military at the front-end.
Not only that, but its philosophy of taking a country down with its heavily-armoured units with air support from attack helicopters and jets thrusting aside less heavily-armed defenders turned out to be vulnerable to highly mobile defenders employing shoulder-mounted weapons such as NLAWs, Javelins and Stingers, who appear and disappear along side roads as the Russian army is stuck advancing along the major highways, and who attack Russian support vehicles every bit as much as its armour.
It's been a lesson. And thank goodness, one that Ukrainian democracy has taught the Russian autocrats and not vice versa.
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