I don't think so. If Russia really wanted to attack, they would have done that before we even knew about it. The element of surprise is essential to modern warfare : that's the difference between WWI and WWII, when Germany defeated in a few days the French army which held strong fortifications and was superior on paper.
It was WAY more complex than that. Don't forget the phony war / Drôle de guerre, which is essentially the situation we have now.
What defeated France quickly were three things: Past heroes insisting on fighting a second WWI (The Germans had been friendly enough to do that, but ignored the Maginot line until overrunning the Seine line), the devil in the detail (like overly complicated fuel logistics) and retreating critical units all the time, hoping for better fighting conditions that never came.
There is an animation somewhere, that showed how German essentially really just followed the retreating heavy tank units of France and only had battles with the French heavy tanks, when the French tanks had been unable to retreat. The prejudice about French warfare has a grain of truth there. The Germans NEVER had been great strategic geniuses or had the better army at all. The allies simply let them win by making really poor decisions early in the war and never really recovering from the following blows. The allies did even KNOW the German attack plan, and still they considered their own positions far inferiour to the Germans - one small counterattack, one small bit of resistance more could have thrown the Germans off-balance.
What to learn from that for today?
- Never expect your opponent to play by your rules.
- Never retreat late to new defensive positions.
- Never expect static defenses to win a war, especially when aircraft and paratroopers are involved.
- Don't expect allies to sacrifice their soldiers for you - they will usually fight for their own lives first and retreat as they want.
- If you have intelligence reports confirming an eminent attack, don't reduce the readiness of your troops, when the expected attack doesn't come on the expected day. It will come.
- Don't hold back your best assets until it is too late.
- A superiority in numbers does not exist, even a smaller army can win a war, when the bigger army is fighting multiple different wars at the same time.
Russia can and will likely attack. And it will do so, when our attention is not on the Ukraine. I still hope for everything just being a huge gamble, but the past weeks just increased the commitment of Russia to an attack. Every day the preparations go on, it will get harder for Russia to return to normal.
And I see little chance of a peaceful diplomatic deal, that will not be a defeat for the west. Russia keeps everything, but has to pay nothing in return? Appeasement? Or Russia gives up the Donbas basin, by dropping their "consultants" like a hot potato and risking the wrath of the many Russian nationalists? This could literally kill Putin, its an unrealistic scenario. Everything stays like it is, but with more soldiers waiting for the other side to try deciding this war or exploit an apparant weakness of the opponent?
The only chance I see for this to end with minor blood shed would be NATO and especially Europe going all in. Only in this case, Russia could keep Crimea, loose a lot of the Donbas basin, but can still sell this as a victory. Neither NATO or Russia would be involved in the fighting officially, but both won't be far away. We would be back in a cold war for a while, Ukraine could join the west and NATO, we could pretend to still have some amount of spine left, despite practically being forced into a carthatic conflict by Russia that we didn't need.
The war won't end because Russia or NATO won, but because China uses our distraction to try annexing Taiwan, forcing the west to either accept poor terms for a cease fire or have to let China gain full strategic control over the west pacific. And in this case, the strategic interests of the USA will decide it. And the European public will be busy watching football, happy that this Ukraine distraction is over before the beginning of the knockout phase, so only a small number of interlectuals will complain.