Putin is a sadistic bastard. But his time will come and when it does I hope the Gadaffi-like death he fears most will seem like a picnic.

He’s a sadistic fuck, yes, but this blade cuts both ways. Ukraine is now and for the foreseeable future going to be staunchly and unrepentantly anti-Russia, and Ukrainian strategic leadership are taking the Finnish approach in the war and have more or less committed to shattering as much of the Russian military that Putin sees fit to throw at them as an overall strategy. It’s an existential struggle for Ukraine, and they are committed to either winning, or taking Russia down with them to the greatest degree possible.

Even if support for Ukraine dries up and Russia is able to pull out an eventual “win”, it’s going to be a decade at least before Russia poses a credible threat in any meaningful sense (and realistically, I’m not sure Russia will recover from this in anything less than about a half century, considering how many unique points are contributing to their strategic failure).

In some way yes. I would expect he's more sadistic with Russians than Ukrainians at this point: imo the point is to hold as much as he can, especially crimea, until Ukraine ask for a cease fire, or even better a frozen front with a frozen war until everyone forget about it.