Putin enjoys 70% support in the polls. Putin does not want a lot of casualties and deaths amongst his soldiers so he allows Zelensky to send more cannon fodder to his well dug in and heavily armed soldiers. He is killing their soldiers at an 8 to 1 ratio. Bakhmut has almost collapsed. They have lost almost 30,000 soldiers holding onto Bakhmut and Soledad. Zelensky has the remains of almost 30 brigades trying to rescue Bakhmut. Putin has worn down their air defenses so much that he has begun to use jets and helicopters in Donbass. I listen to daily situation reports on the 5 Donbass sectors. On a couple of fronts Zelensky is losing 1,000 soldiers a week killed, captured or severely wounded. On the rest he is losing hundreds. The Russians are winning the artillery battle. They are taking out 10 or more artillery pieces a day on the Donbass. The Wagner Group was complaining about the lack of artillery shells. He gets 5,000 artillery shells a day. That is as much as Zelensky fires in a day for his entire army.
The Ukraine is firing 3 times more ammunition in a day than the whole of NATO produces. Pretty soon the Ukrainians will have to cut back on their artillery fire. They recently sent a brigade into a blocking position. The 3,000 plus men were out of ammunition and withdrew as soon as the Russians fired at them.
Zelensky wants to invade Transnistria and to seize the ammunition piles there from the Soviet days. Those shells are mostly expired but the few good ones will last his forces a couple of months. I assume Putin will use air power to devastate Zelensky's approaching forces as soon as they are away from populated areas.