At this point it is more than just territorial control.

It is survival of the country as a whole. At higher level it is survival of the system on both sides.

The military operation has highlighted multiple issues in Russian system. While issues are significant, they are not critical and system currently manages to pretend like issues don’t exist.

The western system side is also experiencing problems. The problems are conceptually different, but the system is also in pretend mode like nothing is happening.

Side observer can’t really guess which system is going to crash first, if crash is coming. It is also possible that none will crash, and world will split into two or more centers of economic gravity.

I am not even looking at role China is playing in all of this. I can just say, that China gets sometimes inaccurate coverage in Western MSM, which results in faulty expectations.