You may need to brace yourself for disappointment. Peace talks are not happening and i see nothing that would indicate that Russia views this the way that you do. They seem to regard territorial gains as an afterthought to their strategy of attrition at the moment. Nothing about this has changed for well over a year now and i don’t expect any big surprises. Just more of the same slow and steady grinding.

I think that Russia considers that time is on its side and that it is in no hurry whatsoever as far as Ukraine is concerned. Putin basically said as much in a recent conversation with international reporters at the St Petersburg Economic Forum. I don’t have the exact quote on hand, but paraphrasing it was something like “yes we could go faster but at the cost of greater losses which we do not want”.

They have also consistently maintained that no additional mobilization will occur, which means that the pace of advance will continue to be limited by the rather modest (compared to what Russia could deploy if it wanted to) size of the force they have dedicated to this conflict. Furthermore, the appointment of a civilian economic administrator to the post of defense minister indicates that they want to prioritize a healthy civilian economy that is not overly skewed toward the military side.

All of these are indications that they are pursuing a strategy not centered around immediate military gains but around long term economic and social stability, even at the cost of a slower resolution to the Ukraine conflict, particularly since they seem convinced that the longer it goes on the weaker the West gets and the worse the global crisis of the US empire will become.

Edit: I have to add a caveat which is that of course all of what i said is contingent on there being no sudden, unexpected developments on the Ukrainian side such as a major political crisis in the Kiev junta or a sudden collapse of the front due to attrition of trained manpower, equipment shortages, demoralization, etc.