Of course, once Ukraine surrenders, the victors will have access to the equipment of the losers. Reminiscent of Ukraine now, The U.S. once armed the RVN (South Vietnam army) with the latest (at the time) U.S. military equipment and a slush of funds to keep them afloat. That didn't help much.
Ex-RVN M107 and M48 Pattons in PAVN storage
Ex-ANA MRAP in Taliban hands
and once upon a time... Iraq
So the U.S. formula of equipping + funding has been tried and tested before...and ended in failure, of course, Washington being Washington, it didn't stop them from repeating the same error it is doing now in Ukraine. Like the habit of throwing sanctions, It's becoming a habitual cycle now with the U.S. trying again and again to solve new problems with the old method.
Certain things could not be solved by merely throwing money.
In Afghanistan, the U.S. not only lavishly equipped the Afghan National Army with multi-million Dollar equipment, but at the same time pumped so much money into the country in a bid to win influence and own the Taliban, that the unintended consequence is that the country becomes a center of Kleptocracy and money laundering operations. In the years before the collapse of Iraq (2014) and Afghanistan (2021), the U.S. pumped millions of dollars each month to pay for the salaries of the ISF and the ANA, only for corrupt bureaucrats to siphon the money and in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, they actually created a whole list of imaginary "ghost soldiers" battalion who existed on administrative papers to ask for more funding to pay for these "ghosts" bills. Ukraine is very similar in its corruption levels to the 2 countries.
In the end, money hollowed out the ISF and the ANA before their collapse. What started as gradual deterioration suddenly escalated into wholesale collapse Let's see if flooding Ukraine with money and weapons is actually the best plan going forward
What Russia has, and Ukraine clearly doesn't, is that Russia has a working and expanding military industry. The Russian leadership didn't travel all around the world to beg for shipments of tanks, whatever they found insufficient, they bought it from friendly countries like North Korea and Iran...with gold.
So once Russia acquired Ukraine, the sheer wealth that Ukraine has in the form of its agricultural fields, natural resources, industries, etc. Will compensate for the heavy losses Russia suffered during its attempt to grab Ukrainian land.
Personally, I think the biggest prize of a Russian victory is the number of population that will be added to the restored empire of Moscow. Even my modest estimate of an addition of 20 Million men (the ones that I predicted would stay in Ukraine over the long term and not flee to the EU), is still a huge boost compared to around 300,000-350,000 men they had lost earlier in their attempt. Please note that Russia had already around 7-9 million additions to its population pool from the acquired territory of Donets, Lugansk, and Crimea.
Together with Belarus, the New Russian Empire under Tsar Vladimir will command approximately 150-170 million men, not quite large compared to the Soviet Onion, but a considerable improvement for a country that used to be at the top 3 of population rankings and secure the recruitment base against an aggressive Western powers at its doorstep
After acquiring the population, Russia is likely going after the Ukrainian gold reserves to compensate for their material losses as well as dismantling factory equipment from Eastern Ukraine to Russia. Ukraine will then be a useful bread basket that Russia could use as leverage for non-cooperative African/Asian countries, although to be fair in the case of Africa that's no longer needed as the Russian influence had steadily grown in the continent in the aftermath of the French withdrawal in Sahel. As for Pakistan who imported their wheat mainly from Ukraine, the military-installed governor who is close to the U.S. will have to think twice before ever doing something that is detrimental to Russia's security (such as supplying artillery rounds to whomever Russia is dealing with).
(I mean that tiny village not far from the front line).
