Yes the Russian and Ukrainian military, both made of up actual people many of whom were conscripts, are both suffering heavy losses. That means lots of death. I don't see lots of death as being worth finding out the Russians overhyped their weapons.

Second tier military remarks are pretty surprising to me. I don't get why so many people seem shocked that a country that suffered a decade of basically mob rule and ruthless resource extraction by oligarchs after the collapse of the previous political entity doesn't match up to the last remaining superpower that has had no real war or massive disruption on its land since the American Civil War. Sure, in a peer to peer fight, which Russia against Ukraine is, Russia is not doing the equivalent of 'impressively' taking Baghdad in three weeks. It's a completely different war. And yes the corruption obviously plays a huge role in how underwhelming the Russian menace seems to western audiences. I'm not saying this as some massive Russia supporting spiel, I am just constantly surprised by this take.

I imagine in a cease fire before official peace talks both sides would reinforce unfortunately, that tends to be what happens and I'm under no illusion that it isn't. As to whether it would be acceptable to give up this land, it comes down to whatever is agreed to in the peace talks. I personally am all for giving up land if needed, especially land where there was a legitimate civil war happening before the Russian invasion, but it doesn't have to happen that way. Before the inevitable accusations of 'thats literally appeasement, Hitler, Chamberlain, 1939, etc' a podcast called Citations Needed has a good rundown on why that is an often dishonest framing for situations. Episode 89.

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-89-how-charges-of-appeasement-equate-diplomacy-with-treason

They also do a good episode on the idea of 'whataboutism' which I wish I had remembered earlier. Episode 66.

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-66-whataboutism-the-medias-favorite-rhetorical-shield-against-criticism-of-us-policy

Obviously you don't need to agree with their takes, but it helps to put it into perspective.

There has been a lot of discussion around the Budapest agreement and the Minsk agreements on Lemmy already, so I won't go into that as others are more knowledgeable than me.