But neither is Ukraine holding ground - thus they are ‘losing’.
It’s not a stalemate and while I admire the Ukraine’s resolve, unless they’re actively supplied by NATO and Biden they’re not going to be able to hold out. Meanwhile Biden seems to want to give them just enough arms to give Putin pain in moving forward but not the arms necessary to actually repel Putin. Add in the Iran ‘peace treaty’ where Biden is actively working with Putin to give $10 billion to Russian businesses to build a nuclear reactor in Iran and its readily apparent that Biden is happily using Ukraine to play off of Putin but has no real intent on defending Ukraine.
And Zelensky has finally realized this.
Biden is not really on Ukraine’s side. I believe he/his handlers were very upset on Day 2 when Zelensky turned down the evacuation offer. That was not supposed to happen. They did not want a fired-up Ukraine mounting more than a “Resistance Symbolique”.
I’m not arguing with the many other discouraging points you make regarding Biden, Iran, etc. it’s not an encouraging outlook.
Arguably there are no winners here. But I am not going to try to read Zelensky’s mind. I’m just watching the actions of both sides. Zelensky could hav3 cut and run long ago. I think Biden even encouraged that option (loser that he is). It’s been a slow grind for Ukraine, and Russia has a lot of arrows in its quiver, but each day costs the Russians more armor, more conscripts. At some point they may have to question what they will gain from scorched earth of Ukraine cities and civilians and whether or not that’s worth the cost.
Putin is consolidating power, while making a great many enemies, inside and outside. The images of the destruction in Ukraine are nothing short of what can be found in the footage from WWII and the devastation in Europe. He will go down in history in the same manner as Hitler, Mao, and other despots.