I think there's a lot of spin in western media regarding what happened at the start of the war. Russian main goal was to get Ukraine to negotiate, and they almost achieved that before Bojo intervened. The secondary goal was to pin the troops in western Ukraine which allowed taking a lot of key territory in the south that ensured there was a land bridge to Crimea.

When the negotiations broke down, Russia started doing ordered withdrawal instead of trying to hold on to territory they knew they couldn't hold with the size of the army they had. They also started erecting layered defences in the south that broke Ukraine's summer offensive.

People in the west have been very focused on the territorial gains, but Russia has been fighting this as a war of attrition from the start. The main objective has been to degrade Ukrainian military while increasing the strength of Russian army. So, even though there were obviously a lot of teething problems at the start, looking back it seems that the overall strategy was fairly sound all along.

What they're doing now is pushing all across the front which is forcing Ukraine to use up whatever reserves they have to simply hold the line. This is not a sustainable situation for Ukraine. It's also worth noting that over time Ukraine loses more and more experienced soldiers who are replaced by conscripts. Eventually there's going to be an inflection point where there simply aren't enough professional soldiers to hold the core of the army together.

I very much expect that we'll be seeing more breakthroughs like Avdeevka, but we're unlikely to see any big arrow offensives because those are very costly. It's just going to be steady pressure until there's a collapse on the Ukrainian side. Once the collapse starts, then things will likely accelerate quickly from there.