It's only a tactical draw on English Wiki because English wiki is ridiculous. Lewenhaupt's army was beaten, dropped all its cannon and supplies, and over the course of the pursuit lost over half its actives to deaths, captures, wounds and desertions. They didn't hold the field, they didn't even hold the initial marching course. It was a profound disaster strategically, and tactically it was a serious defeat.
I'm not using the English wiki. I'm using first of all 'Poltavskoye srazhenie K 300 letiyu Poltavskoy pobedy' by Valeriy Moltusov and second 'The Battle that Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire' by Peter Englund. Where are you getting your information from?
The Swedish army was not driven of the field in Lesnaya, that sounds like Russian nationalistic propaganda.
No pursuit was ever made of Lewenhaubts army. The Russian army failed at that. The troops that reached the main Swedish army was about half of those that set out (roughly 7000), but about 2/3's (nearly three thousand men) made their way back to the Swedish possessions in the Baltics. So in the battle and it's aftermath the Russians inflicted about 2000 casulties out of 12000. Something that is supported by Swedish sources, modern Swedish sources.
Tactical draw, strategic defeat.
It's relevant because you are the one that brought up -40 degree winters. There are no -40 winters in September. Lack of supplies following Lesnaya and Charles' de-facto retreat into Ukraine (if he was feeling confident of victory he would have marched the Smolensk road instead of looking for Mazepa) is how the war was really lost.
What the flying f*ck are you on about? The minus -40 degrees was in February of 1709, when the Swedish army was encamped near the 'fortress' of Veprik.
That was what whittled the Swedish army down with about 5-6000 casulties. Add Holowzcyn with about 1500 casulties. From an original 35.000 you are then down to about 28.000, with the other 4.000 lost is due to normal attrition during a two-year long campaign.
Now it's entirely possible that on the shorter march from Riga to Petersburg Charles keeps the army united and there's no Lesnaya equivalent and he goes into battle full strength and maybe even wins.
Russian army never won a battle during the Great Northern War without outnumbering the Swedish with
at least 2:1 nummerical advantage. Which he wouldn't have.