Exactly, it was a just a poorly thought out offensive that made the underlying assumption that Russian army is weak and can be easily routed by a big show of force. The parallels between this and Ardennes Offensive are surprisingly close. I think this really could be the turning point of the war where it starts becoming clear that Ukraine will lose even in the eyes of western public. Once it becomes impossible to hide that Ukraine is not actually advancing while Russia is, then western support for the war will start collapsing. At that point it’s going to become much harder to send unlimited money and equipment to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian economy is effectively non existent at this point with US footing the bill for pretty much all of public sector at this point. Ukraine obviously isn’t capable of doing any serious manufacturing of their own, and it’s not possible for them to sustain any serious war effort independently. As the tap starts running dry, I expect we’ll see a rapid collapse happen.

There are also increasing suggestions that this is starting to sink in for western leadership. Petr Pavel, who used to be a NATO general and is now Czech president, said that Ukraine has six months recently. That’s likely the most optimistic scenario.

It’s also pretty clear that this isn’t going to be some sort of a frozen conflict as western media is increasingly trying to paint it. Once Ukrainian army exhausts its offensive capacity, which is likely to happen within next couple of months, then Russia will obviously start doing offensive action of their own against a depleted and demoralized army.

I think it’s funny how they keep saying that Ukrainian offensive is “running slowly but steadily”, but there hasn’t actually been more than a few hundred meters progress anywhere after two months of fighting. They literally failed to reach the first defence line. That’s not progress, that’s just Ukrainian army banging its head against a wall. Sometimes a few chips of paint fall off.