I know no one here is part of the Russian government, so I’m not expecting concrete answers here.
What I’m asking is simply what will happen if [well, when, at this point] The Ukraine ends up…falling, per se?
That’s a question in of itself really. Will Ukraine fight until the AFU collapses? Will there be a coup? Would a pro russian or neutral ukraine be established across all of what is currently the Ukraine, or will there be an attempt to make a “taiwan-ified” state in the west?
Capitulation of the Ukrainian state as soon as it is clear that they can no longer hold ground and their lines are about to utterly collapse.
Then, annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk and Zaporizhia oblasts (and maybe Kherson), a Russian client state across the rest of the country, and an insurgency within it that lasts decades and continues to receive weapons from NATO via the Polish and Romanian borders. It doesn’t matter that much how the insurgency ends, it will be extremely bloody and blow back into Europe amd perhaps all over the world.