Those are all good points, Jeffe.
This article does a decent job of explaining why Russia was unable to seize Kiev in the first days of the war, highlighting several persistent, systematic failings that continue to plague Russian forces nearly one year later.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64664944
Although, one year into the war, Russia is still struggling to achieve any of its strategic and operational goals, we shouldn't count them out just yet. First off, it appears that Russia is prepared to fight a long war of attrition. Economic sanctions have not had the desired effect and, despite heavy losses of manpower and ground vehicles, the Russians are showing no signs of calling it quits anytime soon.
At the same time, numerous reports over the past two weeks have lamented Ukraine's rapidly dwindling ammunition supplies. Reports from various fronts all cite critical shortages of all types of ammunition, but especially artillery shells and mortar bombs. Ukrainian forces have had to sharply decrease artillery fires due to these shortages, in some cases ceding local fire superiority to the Russians.
On the other side, earlier reports that Russia was running out of artillery ammunition (indicated by intel that Russia was buying ammo from North Korea and Iran) may have been exaggerated. Local ammunition shortages were probably caused by the destruction of ammo caches by HIMARS strikes and SOF raids. More recent reports suggest that the Russians have learned their lesson and are now placing ammo dumps beyond HIMARS range. At the moment, the Russians have enough artillery ammunition to launch daily H&I strikes near the Ukrainian border with Belarus, as well as supporting offensive operations in the east. Ukrainian intel believes the purpose of this daily shelling is to keep Ukrainian forces tied down in the north, away from the actual fighting in the Donbas and elsewhere.
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