Ukraine is winning, but the war is far from over. As after Midway, El Alamein and Stalingrad, it's not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.
But the phrase "if Ukraine is winning" is already inaccurate now that Russian equipment abandoned in Kharkhiv makes Russia Ukraine's largest arms supplier. A correct description, based on Russia's desperate revenge bombings of the Kryih Rih dam and the Kharkhiv power station, would be "how fast is Ukraine winning".
"American escalation": There's no escalation in $2bn in new aid, which = about 2.2 days of Russia's war expenditures, which run at $900m/day. https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383
Half-defeated rogue empires invent stab in the back myths that prepare the next war. This blame game has already started on Russian chat shows and Telegram channels. Read Igor Girkin's and Maxim Kalashnikov's channels to taste the flavor of revanchist Russian fascism.
We want to do this only once and render the Russian state, or what's left of it after its coming third collapse in little more than 100 years, utterly incapable and uninterested in anything but soft power. After losing the Great Northern War to Peter the Great, an aggressive empire-building Sweden retreated forever into its core ethnic Swedish territory. Sweden replaced its appetite for war with neutrality, until Putin pushed it into NATO this year. The only viable endgame to this war is a similarly catastrophic defeat that crushes forever Putin's and his Silovikis' appetite for reincarnating Peter the Great.
"objectified Russia": Once again, you're replacing analysis with psychologizing me. Since all my articles about the Russian-Ukraine war are filled with professional level research on the Russian history I've studied since 1972, it's clear I take Russia and its history far more seriously than you do.
I feel pity for every Russian who's a prisoner of mythologized, empire-obsessed history and greatness defined by conquest. I feel compassion for Russians capable of looking in the mirror, like those who've left for Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku, Belgrade and those who had the courage to protest against their country's genocidal war of choice.
"security concerns": Zelenskiy offered neutrality. Putin invaded anyway because he swallowed the genocidal Eurasianist fascist nonsense peddled by Ilya Ilyin, Dugin and other Russian nationalists. This Ukraine-erasure Russification movie is a rerun that's been running for more than three centuries. Time to cancel the show. Since Zelenskiy is Jewish, he knows what it's like to have one's existence and identity denied.
"Escalation": Germany still won't provide Ukraine with Leopard tanks. New APCs and IFVs are sitting in a German factory and Scholz doesn't order them shipped. If you want a shorter war, push for more weapons deliveries so the Ukrainians bring a faster collapse of Russia's incompetent, indisciplined, murderous mass grave manufacturing military. Otherwise, there will more Izyums, Buchas, Mariupols.
