Ukraine

He’s still in a fairly advantageous position militarily right.

For now yes, but he was in a much MUCH better position before he invaded Ukraine.

• Two fewer NATO members on his borders
• The full bounty of Soviet stockpiles of weapons
• The inherent fear about what the "second largest military on Earth" could do
• The power of threatening to use nuclear weapons
• hundreds of thousands of healthy men to drive a national economy

All of those are gone now for russia.

With russia abandoning its ally Armenia in a military time of need against Azerbaijan, it suggests russia is not capable of fighting wars on two fronts. It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that Georgia marching forces to take back South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

But it never was actually about that, now was it?

No it wasn't. I think Putin started with Crimea because he was afraid of losing Russia's best warm water port after Euromaidan kicked the russian puppet out of Ukraine and Ukraine indicating it would not renew the russian lease of Sevastopol. When that was stunningly successful for russia to take Crimea, and the world mostly allowed it, he thought there were no limits on him taking Ukraine bit by bit. Luhansk and Donetsk invasion was to secure the petroleum and gas reserves found in Eastern Ukraine and prevent Ukraine from threatening Russia's only real economy power: fossil fuel energy deliveries to Europe and Asian. Again the world didn't really step in or sanction Putin very much, and he thought Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine would be an easy win.