Yes, Ukraine defended Kyiv in the initial weeks of the war stopping the attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian government. And that was early 2022. We're now at the back end of 2023 and Russia controls most of the East and South East of Ukraine, the offensive hasn't retaken much ground despite all the hype around Western equipment and training, and for the ground Ukraine has recaptured they've taken heavy losses (as the BBC alluded to
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66581217). We're now heading into Winter which could see most of those losses reversed and Russia consolidate the gains they've made.
Strategically Russia has secured Crimea which gives them access to the Black Sea, they control the Eastern parts of Ukraine where largely Russian speaking folk live, and they've secured a land bridge to Crimea. Ukraine actually doesn't have a military big enough to retake this land, they've suffered something like 25% casualties to regain some tiny bulge of land. They can't afford to lose that many men and have a force able to defend the rest of their country. I'm not here to cheer Russia on, I'm here to give people a reality check. The war needs to end because it's unwinnable, it's damaging all our economies.
On top of that the West over leveraged ourselves politically and we've pushed a lot of fringe nations away because they're now scared of us after seeing the sanctions we put on Russia. No one now wants to be under the thumb of the US financial system because it can and will be used as a weapon if they step out of line, so you'll see a lot of them move towards Brics. This whole thing is a complete mess and a failure of leadership.
