Frankly, the hot take that shaped the 20th century was "Did the Russians lose the Russo-Japanese war because the Japanese are that good or because the Russians suck that hard?" Turns out that absolutes are vanishingly rare in the wild and a little of column A, a little of column B makes the world go 'round. Something I haven't seen pointed out in many places is the fact that this is not a whole-assed Russian invasion. The whole point is it's a peace-keeping mission with the intent to swiftly and surgically decapitate and replace despotic leadership. Putin wants a "Mission Accomplished" flag on an aircraft carrier by April and if he brought the full brunt of Russian mechanized warfare to bear we'd be looking at a very different situation. As it is, being able to go "oh that? That's just a precise little police action, I don't care about it anyway" has been essential so far to Putin's framing of the invasion.