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Notes -
Ukraine wasn't a disaster because of Zelensky. Ukraine was going to be a disaster because a critical mass of the Ukrainians were plainly and already primed towards an insurgency that was going to be a disaster where instead of stay-behind actors doing rear-area spotting for artillery strikes behind the front lines in a conventional conflict, the flood of MANPADs and ATGMs going into the region from NATO were going to make Iraq look quaint. The cause of this sentiment isn't because Zelensky is popular, but because Russia was already hated by so many, and only going to get hated more when they moved in and started executing their pre-planned targetting lists of anti-Russian/pro-western actors. The same sort of people who manned territorial defense units will to go out and launch attacks on Russian armored columns are also the sort of people who would be ambushing Russian counter-insurgency columns.
Zelensky isn't the guy who made it cool to oppose the Russians, he's the guy who kept the Ukrainian government together, keeping a conventional war going instead of an insurgency war. Cratering the Ukrainian government was a clear Russian intention, but Putin's initial invasion force wasn't any better set up to deal with an insurgency than it was serious conventional resistance. Remember, one of the 'war isn't going to happen' arguments pre-invasion was that Putin's buildup was too small to do a meaningful occupation of the country.
Putin's fundamental mistake is that he discounted the relevant of the Ukrainian public's views, not because he didn't foresee Slavic Churchuill. Not taking into account the viewpoints of the nation you are invading is kind of the opposite of a good basis for a gamble.
If I were a Ukrainian citizen, especially one living anywhere west of Kharkiv, I think I'd see the current situation as a significant upgrade from "decades long grinding insurgency." Leaving aside romantic nationalism, the human suffering involved in a society supporting an insurgency is massive, outstripping that involved in a conventional war by an order of magnitude. To say nothing of the suffering that seems to be inflicted in areas occupied during this war.
And "occupying the major cities/seat of government" and work from there is what Putin would have gotten, and he tried to get it on the cheap. You can argue it would have been a long and bloody occupation and ultimately a negative for Russia, but that's not really the point, it would have been different had they taken Kyiv. It is unlikely sanctions would have lasted at their current, mutually destructive level had Kyiv fallen. It is unlikely that no European country would make a serious effort towards a compromise peace if Kyiv fell.
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