Is this how you would want to win if this was your war? (Rhetorical question, you wouldn't.) The question was never "will Russia ultimately win." The question was always about the operational efficiency of that victory.
Was this Russia's original intent when they did their warplanning? I doubt it. Because they would've gained a lot more by enforcing a fait accompli with a swift victory.
What we want and what we can realistically achieve are seldom the same thing. And as the NATO and Ukraine continuing live demonstrations are showing, rushing in modern weapons does not automatically equate to a corresponding increase in combat power or operational efficiency.
For both Russia and Ukraine, their baseline force structure, training and equipment are so fundamentally deficient no amount of imported wunderwaffe is going to change them into the kind of slick and sleek modern high tech fighting force you evidently want without effectively rebuilding the military from the ground up. Just look to China’s military modernisation to get a flavour of the scale and scope of investment needed over decades.
That is clearly not achievable in time for this war. So rather than pie in the sky daydreaming, what the Russians should, and are doing is working to make the best use of the forces, equipment and tactics they have available or are easily attainable. Which is precisely what they are doing.
It might not look pretty, but it’s undeniably effective.
Operational efficiency is also not at all the simple clear-cut metric you seem to think it is. Operational efficiency is determined by the strategic objectives.
While normally you would expect a speedy victory to be a top priority, it’s not always the case, where stalling and attritional strategies are very commonly employed.
The Ukraine war is a case where it makes perfect sense for Russia to want to stall and attrition Ukraine rather than seek rapid battlefield advancement all the time.
This makes perfect sense both at the operational level to minimise Russian combat losses, as well as on the broader economic strategic level to drag the conflict into winter to repay NATO and the EU in crippling energy bills and/or outright cutting off supplies when they have no via alternatives.
Another factor that I think needs addressing is that overall, it seems to me that people are just assuming that China is desperate to sell any and everything the Russians might want, and it’s just that the Russians don’t want to buy.
But have people considered that maybe China does not want to sell Russia the things they want?
For one thing, any Chinese weapons sold to Russia will be used in anger right on NATO’s doorstep. That will give NATO front row seats to the show and they are likely to learn a great deal about the capabilities and limitations of modern Chinese weapons. Hell, it’s not out of the question for NATO to be able to capture or even buy fully working examples.
For another, again, just look at the Ukrainian case study where they are using modern NATO weapons with minimal to no training and very much not as stipulated in the manuals. The reputational damage to western weapons has been significant even with western MSM doing overtime damage control fluff pieces as fast as they can.
I have zero doubt the Russians will do the same with any modern Chinese weapons sold, and blame the inevitable malfunctions on ‘poor Chinese quality’ rather than their own lack of proper care and training in how to use those weapons as designed.
Then there is the massive issue of pure Russian incompetence, with the latest reminder coming from the Crimea air base calamity.