Small animals can defeat large, powerful predators simply by being too prickly to bother with. Russia is almost certainly not going to deploy nukes over Ukrain

Small animals can defeat large, powerful predators simply by being too prickly to bother with. Russia is almost certainly not going to deploy nukes over Ukraine. The cost/benefit is just not there: they won't help take or hold territory, and they invite strategic retaliation from more actors than just Ukraine. So. Putin's political position is not unassailable (remember how touch-and-go things were with Prigozhin? How hardly anyone stood up to him?). If holding Ukraine becomes genuinely untenable, he'll have to make some excuse to leave, or fall. It's even possible he'll die of old age or pneumonia and be replaced by a more reasonable psychopath.