From a military perspective this war is actually interesting, and will be studied extensively in our War Colleges. It almost appears that we’ve returned to a sort of WWI type static warfare with defensive weapons able to blunt any attacking offensive forces. Tanks have not been able to make much of a difference and neither has air power. Artillery has been deployed effectively by both sides.
The thing that broke the static Western Front in WWI was the collapse of German logistics. Tanks got lots of press, but didn't really contribute much.
The downfall of the Germans was their success - they smashed through the lines, and pushed the front Westward in what could have been a decisive victory, had they been able to do it three years earlier. But by the time of the Kaiserschlacht, Germany was almost exhausted in materiel, and while they could likely hang on for months or years more with the benefit of the railway, road, and communications trench networks that years of static warfare had allowed them to perfect, they had no chance of supplying a new (more distant) line, across the shattered terrain of the old front.
Tanks became important only in the 1930s and '40s - and their effectiveness in keeping war mobile was completely dependent on close air support, at which the Luftwaffe excelled in the early stages of the war.
It's notable that the Battle of Britain wasn't a naval battle, but an aerial battle for control of the skies over the Channel.
And that both the German and Allied advances through Europe took place under an umbrella of air superiority or even supremacy. The reversal of the Allied forces at the Battle of the Bulge significantly occurred during a period of bad weather that grounded allied aircraft; It ended when the skies became accessible again.
In Ukraine, air power is being effectively limited to the skies above territory controlled by a given force. Neither side can effectively project air power into the enemy's airspace, due to the highly effective air defence systems in use; On both sides, this is a legacy of Soviet doctrine that sought to deny any enemy access to their airspace, rather than to force themselves upon the enemy's airspace.
NATO Cold War doctrine had the objective of eliminating ground based air defence systems, as well as the enemy airforce, to establish superiority or supremacy in the skies over their ground forces, and such would prevent the ground war from bogging down into static defensive warfare. What Ukraine has been lacking is air-superiority fighters, and (as importantly) ground attack weapons such as radar seeking missiles, that can eliminate or suppress Russian anti aircraft systems.
Control of the skies is a prerequisite for the avoidance of static defensive ground war. The only other way to break it is to destroy its supply chain, which is virtually impossible without a massively effective blockade, and/or a huge strategic blunder.(On the Western Front in WWI, it took the combination of both).
If Ukraine had a small number of A10 style anti-tank aircraft, and (most critically) sufficient control of the airspace, including suppression of triple-A, for such vulnerable aircraft to be able to survive their sorties, the Russian lines could be broken in short order.
But as long as Ukraine cannot effectively undertake aerial attacks against Russian forces behind their defensive lines, it will require the Russians to fuck up massively, if Ukraine is to retake the occupied territory.
Of course, it's by no means certain that Putin won't fuck up massively; But waiting for him to do so could be a very long term strategy indeed.
