There is one truth. Ukraine loses no matter how it goes. They can only win with heavy support from us. If they lose, they lose. But if they seem to be doing very well, that puts Russia into a corner.... do they accept a NATO supplied, supported and directed defeat inside Russia? OR do they go very big somehow?
The NATO game plan is that they will shake things up, and cause Putin to fall from power. But it’s actually backing them into a very bad corner where they accept a loss, a change in government, etc... OR escalate bigly. And such an escalation doesn’t have to be nuclear. Hyperbarics or glide bombs hitting Kiev, the seat of government, the not so concealed NATO training and supply enclaves in Ukraine. And those troops inside Russia have no hope of air defense, they can bomb the living hell out of them. The gas line to the EU is right there.
And then there is nuclear.
There is no path to Uke victory unless one erroneously believes this small incursion will cause Russia to depose Putin and install a DC/London approved Ivy educated WEF leader.
Nothing in Russian history suggests anything remotely like this will occur.
The chances the Russians will use tactical nukes just went up a few dozen times. Why to make a point. Russia has always had tactical nukes as part of its tactical doctrine they do not view them as the taboo the war does. They have been holding back because they are down wind of any ground bursts a airburst over a major troop concentration doesn’t leave a huge fallout plume and it sends a message that NATO not the USA would match. I would put even money on tactical nukes by the election hell of an October surprise too.
You will figure out what is going on when Ukraine takes Transnistria. Ukraine as part of NATO is a done deal. It will happen and that is just one part of the strategic defeat Russia has suffered. Sweden and Finland are now in NATO too and the Poles are arming up big time. Russia needs to sue for peace now before they lose even more of what they invaded for. Putin can stay or go. Nobody in the West cares. Eventually he will be replaced or die and eventually the revanchists in Russia there is no future for Russia outside of the West. China will gobble them up otherwise and it will be a new Mongol Yoke.
Ukraine already lost. All the Nation’s whose diplomacy after the coup in Ukraine gave them ownership of everything not nailed down, to include the soil, is under Western management, ownership or our western governments who secured loans using every Ukrianian’s brithright of their nation. Their nation was leveraged to debt by our hand picked traitorus Uke thieves. The people selecteed by the west to run Ukraine have even made statements to the effect that their will be no Ukrainians left to complain about their Nation being under foreign western ownership.
The only Beef the US has with foreign ownership is that we lose our pennys on the dollar investment in Ukraine when it goes under Russian Management, who will give it back to “their” Ukrainian people debt free from the West.
Except of course, the whole war of the Soviet Union on Finland before and during WWII.
Finland lost territory, but they survived as an independent state.
Or, a more recent example, the war in Afghanistan.
Or the attempted invasion of Poland by the new Soviet Union in 1919-1921.
As trading material for negotiations, if Trump is elected in November, this makes perfect sense.