Russia is winning. Ukraine is losing. And that is by every conceivable metric: in terms of armour lost, in terms of casualties, in terms of territory lost.
Everyone seems to overlook the fact that Ukraine has already lost 1/4 of its territory to Russia and after 6 weeks of a "counteroffensive" Ukraine has failed to regain any of that territory.
Russia is demilitarising not only Ukraine but - given the recent admissions of Biden and Stoltenberg - the US and NATO as well. The West is running out of ammo. The cluster munitions going to Ukraine are only being sent because the US has run out of normal 155mm ammo.
Think about what that means.
Yes, the Russians thought that the SMO would end quickly and that Ukraine would negotiate peace ASAP. This they actually DID. Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace deal on April 1 2022 but then Boris Johnson came to Kiev and scuttled the deal.
After that, it was time to settle in for the long haul.
People like you enjoy harping on this "3 day" misapprehension on the part of Russia. Well, let's not ignore the fact that the West also thought that it would be a short conflict. They were confident that Russia's economy would implode from the sanctions, that Russia would - as you seem to still be saying - "destabilise itself from the inside".
Well, guess what? It's been a year and a half, and Putin is stronger than ever, the Russian military industrial complex has been placed on a war footing and is churning out tanks, planes, ammo. drones, etc. 24/7. They have increased production capacity by 2-10x in all sectors.
The West, meanwhile, has done nothing but draw down reserves, as the US goes begging, hat in hand, to the Koreans, to the Israelis, and everywhere, scouring the world to scratch together the last remaining rounds of 155mm ammo available.
FACT: the US production capacity for 155mm ammo produces in one month what Ukraine uses IN ONE DAY.
Is Putin an autocrat? In many ways, yes. Certainly he has the power to direct the Russian military industrial complex to increase production with "no questions asked".
Biden? No way. In the US, it is the giant military contractors that tell the White House what to do. Biden can only beg them to increase production. But the US simply doesn't have the resources, in the first place, and the contractors don't want to increase production without huge long term commitments.
Long term commitments which Biden refuses to give because - like you - he is drinking his own bath water and thinks that the war will all be over soon because "Russia has already lost".
Meanwhile, thousands of Ukrainian men are dying every week as this disastrous "counteroffensive" drags on.
And yet - and YET - in the midst of this disastrous counteroffensive, with ammo running disastrously low, the UkroNazis STILL take great pleasure at killing civilians in Donetsk.
Talk about a genocidal dictatorship. It is Ukraine that most closely fits that bill.
Dictator? Check. Genocide? Check.
