This assumes that Russia will not resort to a much more rapid and brutal campaign: large scale destruction, especially or urban areas with concentrated populati

This assumes that Russia will not resort to a much more rapid and brutal campaign: large scale destruction, especially or urban areas with concentrated populations of resistance. They can kill, capture, or chase away political leadership. They can buy off or kill capture etc military leadership. Then they can install their own government. There would be pockets of resistance for years, but they've dealt with smoldering conflicts of that sort before. They problem with that strategy would probably be massively increased sanctions and Europe that gradually weans itself off of Russian fissile fuels, their main source of income. However they could shift to selling all of it to China, along with their new revenue from the agricultural breadbasket of in the Ukraine. At a steep discount I'm sure because they would not be in a bargaining position, and the other sanctions would still hurt a lot. It would leave them weakened for decades, but they (Putin) may either not believe that outcome or be willing to accept it. Other powerful forces (the oligarchs) might not like this, and could work to remove Puting from power, or maybe they receive assurances that they'll maintain their status and wealth under the new order. Hard to say. It would leave them closer to a North Korea model of existence though, which can hardly be their plan A. My guess is that right now they're still pushing to see just how much further the west itself is willing to push back. If they can regroup, escalate the violence and rapidly and be done in another week or two then maybe maybe they can still mostly get away with this. If not, I think the most likely outcome (at least more likely than the bleaker one outlined above) is that they, Ukraine, and Europe try to find any figleaf of face-saving they can ti allow Russia to declare their goals accomplished. And Russia will still have succeeded in significantly reducing Ukraine with much more empowered and entrenched separatist groups. Second to that would be an Oligarch-driven removal of Putin. At least, I think those are the best case scenarios. Once Russia's "done in a week and back home to watch football this weekend" plan failed, these seem to be the options they're left with.