Is this ad hoc reasoning?

Had a weird argument that was very redundant a few weeks ago over Russians poor military Performance. This is a little long.. 

The person told me no way Ukraine can survive for a few weeks. I told them oynx has been reporting the Russian losses independently and it’s been disastrous for Russia. Then the person said Putin won’t care he will keep sending. I said he can but if he’s achieving nothing and suffering devastating losses eventually you run out tanks and vehicles. And this is where the trend starts theirs always a speculative ad hoc. The next one was “well Russia will just bomb the cities nothing the Ukrainians can do.” I said it’s far too expensive in Syria they used cheap barrel bombs.  They can kill civilians but if your not taking territory or land it seems pointless to spend all that money on indiscriminate bombing where civilians can just shelter in place. And then again and again “Putin will use nukes” of “Putin will just conscript millions of Russians” all highly unlikely. It was like just ignore all the aviable evidence we have and make wild hypotheticals as why “Ukraine can’t win”. Any thoughts on this it’s almost like a whataboutism but instead of the traditional sense it’s more like yeah but what if this happens? And then over and over and over again.