He seems optimistic about Ukraine's war efforts, with several areas of Kiev being back in Ukrainian hands.
There is reason to be optimistic, if the question is whether his country will remain occupied. The RAND corporation (who specialize in studies of military operations) has determined that, broadly speaking, if you want to hold a territory against minimal resistance, you need to have approximately 20 soldiers on the ground for every 1000 inhabitants of the region.
In Ukraine, that would mean the Russians need to have something like 800,000 troops in the area. Note: The Russian military at the moment, in total, including all branches, numbers about one million people. And the Ukrainians are putting up well more than "minimal" resistance. If the studies are correct, short of something that absolutely quells resistance, Russia can't really hope to hold the nation.
Unfortunately, they can hope to beat the crap out of Ukraine until they get some concessions.
Chemical weapons might be next I fear.
That's possible, but a risky choice for Russia. It
might shock the Ukrainians into surrender, but it might not. But it would almost certainly get Russia's remaining major trade partner, China, to walk away from them. This would be damaging to Russia internally, and start a bit of a race: which comes first - surrender in Ukraine, or civil unrest in Russia?