I don’t know if I would say it’s the sunk cost fallacy.
If he pulls out now having not achieved anything except destroying the Russian economy then his government is surely doomed. It seems likely that he would eventually be killed or at least imprisoned for life after such an event also.
Therefore his only option is to carry on in the hopes of getting to the point where he can claim some kind of victory, however likely or unlikely that may be.
> Therefore his only option is to carry on in the hopes of getting to the point where he can claim some kind of victory
Just to add, he already moved his demands from "Surrender all of Ukraine" to "Surrender those two territories". The one horrible thing here is that there is no demand that he can "win" without harming a lot of innocent people, so he will keep pushing it, no matter how bad things get.
If he pulls out now having not achieved anything except destroying the Russian economy then his government is surely doomed. It seems likely that he would eventually be killed or at least imprisoned for life after such an event also.
Therefore his only option is to carry on in the hopes of getting to the point where he can claim some kind of victory, however likely or unlikely that may be.