The problem is under a dictatorship no one can really tell you things are bad, until that problem boils over into another generals line of authority.
Which for Russia, they are finding out, that even if they win this war, they will have to scale down production because they won't have the manpower for that production in 20 years
Which means even if they can hold Crimea, they won't have the production to work Crimea as well as the Ukrainians.