putin doesn't have the finances to keep this up long, he'll only have two choices, retreat, or start escalating, try to hold them hostage with the threat of nuclear annihilation. either way, he's fucked. if he lets those men come home without securing Ukraine, they'll start talking. soon everyone will realize that putin is lying to them, and has been for decades.
if he seriously threatens to use nuclear weapons, then all bets are off, and while he will certainly cause a lot of damage on his way out, he'll be destroyed, along with at least all of moscow.
the thing about lying to people, is you have to keep doing it...lies propagate themselves, and become harder and harder to manage. you lie about the grain harvest, then you have to lie about why bread prices are still going up...so you tell them America quit selling tractor parts to russia, so vast fields of wheat rotted in the fields, unable to be harvested...then you have to explain to the farmers why they didn't see those vast fields of wheat rotting in the fields....oh, those fields were all in the west...but you have to tell the farmers in the east that those fields were in the east...eventually, the farmers in the east are going to run into some farmers from the west, compare notes, and wonder why shit don't add up...
putin is about to experience what that is like