Russia's friends: Iran and North Korea.
Ukraine's friends: NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Finland, Sweden, Israel, Austria, Switzerland.
In this war Russia is at war with Lend Lease instead of fighting with it. $1.8tn in pre-war but shrinking GDP vs $70tn GDP in the West.
In 1941 Yamamato was asked by the war cabinet what the result of Japan going to war against the US would be. He said Japan would run wild for six months and then, if it could not get the US to sue for peace, Japan was doomed. He had studied at Harvard, had been a military attache at the embassy in Washington and knew the US very well. For 250 years since the revolution the US has been ending the political and military careers of all those who underestimated it, from the British general who said he needed only a few months and 5000 redcoats to subdue America to Khruschchev who said "we will bury you". Russia is headed for Tsushima 2.0 (And Japan didn't even have Lend Lease, just Jacob Schiff's $200m bond issue because of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom my paternal grandfather lived through).
Chinese weapons supply to Russia: zero due to fear of secondary sanctions. Who guarantees the supply of Persian Gulf oil to China? The US navy.
The geopolitical ambitions in Europe of Russia's Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet kleptocracy have always exceeded its technological and economic capacity. States that don't align their ambitions and capacity fail. Western coalition support for Ukraine will continue until Russia aligns them again by shrinking its ambition.
