I would imagine they'd settle for half the country right now, but wouldn't mind turning the whole into a client state like belarus

This was the plan under Yanukovich, in fact. It didn't really work put, hence the start of armed hostilities.

The original intent was to fold Donbas into Russia and leave it at that, at least in the short term

Original intent as in 2014, or 2022? Both would be false statements, in 2014 they tried setting up so called peoples republics everywhere around the right bank of the Dnieper, and they could only get the Donbas ones to stick because of direct involvement per Igor Girkin's own words. In 2022 they launched a decapitation strike towards Kyiv which utterly failed, and occupied other oblasts aside from the Donbas ones too. It was never about just the Donbas.

Not true. They claimed a million man army 2 months into the war, and have been "recruiting" something along the lines of 20k a month

They claimed less than 800k by 2023 actually, and recruitment numbers per month have varied between 15k to 30k. Your argument was about killed, and you won't find a reliable statistic anywhere out there that shows the AFU losing 100k soldiers a year. Aside from the period in late 2022 and mid 2023 when they were on the offense, the AFU have mostly been on the defensive where in general the losses are 3 times lower than when atracking. So unless you're willing to suggest that Russia has 300k KIA a year, these numbers are just nonsensical.

They do, regularly. The last 6 months there have been a few instances of Ukraine rushing men to an area to try to contain a breakthrough

So you admit that Russia wasn't actually able to have any breakthroughs, that's a good first step. Units do sometimes get moved, but you attributing this to the AFU constantly moving troops around when the war is this static is farcical, the fronts would've bucked by now if this was the actual tactic.

It saves Russia effort chasing down forces to kill when Ukraine is forced to bring a concentration to counter Russia in a vulnerable spot. (Dobropilla, Kupyansk, and Pokrovsk, for instance)

Mentioning Kupyansk without acknowledging that Russia just straight up lied about taking the city is telling, and Pokrovsk has been a slow attractions grind for the better part of a year and a half, none of these were breakthroughs, none of these became vulnerable spots over night, and Kostyantinivka looks to be more of the same, but with the added fact that progress is even slower than last year. Russia struggling so hard to take even a single small to medium sized city a year is not a positive thing nor does it show them being more effective at attrition.

And drone squads are used by both sides very effectively, in fact there's been a surge of Russian millbloggers recently complaining about Ukraine's clear superiority in this regard.

Because people have foresight and can see the trajectory of their army, and it's in a rapid nosedive.

Yet Russian battle field gains paint the opposite picture, a thing you seem completely unable to accept.

Meanwhile Russia is still casually paying people to fight,

There is nothing casual about the amounts of money people are being paid to join the army, it is putting a huge amount of stress on the Russian economy and other sectors of the industry need to also increase wages to remain competitive, which makes the situation even worse. And if you think that this could all be solved through yet another round of mobilization, given the number of people who fled the country last time and the amount the current discontent due to the internet restrictions and social media bans they you are beyond naive.

A ceasefire to rearm and recruit is not an end of hostilities.

I never said it was, but it's not something someone would do if they're desperate yo keep the war going at all costs which is how you previously painted Zelensky. As for NATO peacekeepers and them being caught in the war when it inevitably reignites, thanks for confirming that you believe it's inevitable that this is what's going to happen, and that Russia will be the one to do it.

Cautious. Liberal with their drones and glide bombs, using small highly-mobile groups to clean up after tossing hundreds of them at a place like Pokrovsk

This is the sane strategy they've employed since the summer of 2022 by the way, not out of choice but necessity, and yet every year it seems their targets get smaller and smaller, from Bakhmut to Avdiivka to Pokrovsk, from a sizeable percentage of the Ukrainian territory under their control to less than 1% in the last 3 years, this is the kind of strategy that will result in the rest of the Donetsk being out of their grasp for another few years, meanwhile recruitment keeps going down, economic issues keep piling up, their stocks of Soviet era weapons keep getting closer and closer to the very bottom of the barrel as confirmed by satellite images, and the list goes on. This war is going to be Russia's equivalent of the Soviet Afghan war, and hopefully it ends the same for the newer empire too, with a total collapse. It's the only consistent thing about Russia, aside from the oppression and aggressive territorial expansion.