I don’t think so. Russia is like a world power. It will be
definitely impossible for Ukraine to conquer Russia.
The weapons and armed forces of Russia are more than those
of Ukraine.
Notwithstanding, there’s one thing that Ukraine can do and
that is to fight for a long term so that Russia could rethink ending the
war.
Note that the formidable Russian war machine through the
generations has been unbeatable, not because of its skill, not because of its
technological superiority, but because of the near-fanatical dedication of
Russian soldiers to do what is required to ‘defend the motherland’, frequently
to the death.
Russia’s military leaders and Putin is firmly in
this group, have always fallen back on tactics that could have been taken
directly out of Zapp Brannigan’s handbook:
Sure, the Russian military can steamroller smaller and
weaker forces, but in an ‘all-out war’ situation, the Russian war machine is
highly dependent on its troops being willing to die in vast numbers.
That’s an easy case to make in a situation where your land
is being invaded by a hostile foreign force, it’s a much harder
prospect to sell your people on the idea that their children should die in
their thousands in order to capture a country which a large portion of your
population have relatives in, and which poses no credible threat to your
country.
Putin is dependent on being able to bring this war to a
swift conclusion, and so far that doesn’t seem likely, the Ukrainians are
putting up a far sterner fight than had been expected. The government which
Putin painted as criminals, cowards and Nazis to justify this war has very
publicly elected to stay to fight and die with its people rather than flee to a
safe haven as they easily could have done. Pictures and videos circulating on
social media of Russian soldiers apparently maliciously targeting civilians only
serve to further entrench this.
The Ukrainians don’t have the ability to stop Russia, but
they do have the ability to bleed Russia so badly that they are
forced to end the conflict.
The usually heavily pro-Putin Russian civilians have been
uncharacteristically critical of the conflict already, once the body bags start
to pile up, the western sanctions start to bite at home, the oligarchs start to
lose billions and the conflict turns into another Chechnya or Afghanistan, with
a constant price in young Russian blood and economic damage extracted for each
day the conflict continues, internal pressures within Russia may well force an
end to this conflict, likely in the form of a dagger in Putin’s back.
