Russian propaganda (which I'm quite happy to include The Duran under) has been clear on two things: one, this is not about "Ukraine vs Russia" - it's about the NATO-backed western-Ukrainian Banderite regime vs the Russian-speaking population in the east supported directly since 2022 by the Russian military. Two, that the weapons supplied to the Ukrainian regime by the west would be methodically destroyed by the Russian military, in effect only prolonging the fighting and the consequent casualties. At the same time I have been hearing this from Russian propaganda, from the west I have heard countless stories about collapsing Russian morale, the Russian war machine being incompetent, Russians turning on their own (the Wagner group "coup", for example), and the "Big Offensive" that was going to break the morale of the Russians and the Russian-backed Ukrainians for once and for all, leading to regime-change in Moscow. The Russian propaganda channels, meanwhile, have stated that the Russian goal over the course of the SMO has been the complete degradation of Ukrainian military capacity to enforce their government's claim over the disputed land in the east. Now approaching two years into the more active phase of the conflict (which started in 2014), I would say the Russians are achieving their aim. Russia appears nowhere near collapse, and the Ukrainian military looks absolutely degraded and de-moralized. The Russians have never expressed any desire to occupy western Ukraine; what they have said is that they want the remaining Ukrainian state to be incapable of mounting a threat to the east. To me, it looks like they're achieving that goal.