We hesitate to bring this up, because it only goads the low-information monkeys to dig around their cages for some feces to fling to fend off Reality, but we cannot help but kick them in the crotch again by pointing out that nearly another month has passed since Ukraine was totally defeated. Which foregone outcome we were assured of, most earnestly, by people who were sure that Any Day Now™, it would inevitably be so.
At the beginning of the month, faithful Putinophiles, like Chicago Cubs fans for over a century, thought "This will finally be our season". Because Vlad said so. For only the 111th time.
Sh'yeah, right. What could possibly go wrong?
Double bummer for the faithful Putinophiles: The Telegraph is Britistan's conservative daily, not one of the Useful Idiot-run reliably commie-tard house organs.
Three weeks later, in week 115 of "Just Two Weeks To Flatten Kiev", unlike countless promises, the only thing Putin has filled with relentless persistence are more Russian body bags (when they even bother to collect their dead).
Pretty much like every day since 2/26/22.
The lines shift a few yards each way back and forth, as they have for over 18 months, like a profoundly retarded refighting of the Somme, except less capably. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes occasionally.
Bean-counters on both sides in 1915 thought they could win, if only they could throw enough men into the machineguns. Europe lost an entire generation disproving that monumental, and monumentally idiotic, military policy. Putin evidently hasn't played enough tic-tac-toe to learn the lesson yet.
The Usual Retards won't read this deep, but that doesn't mean "Ukraine Is Winning", unless you consider France or Belgium in 1919 what "winning" looks like. Common Core grads should probably look that one up before continuing.
It also doesn't mean we should be giving Ukraine an endless unlimited commitment, and it sure as hell means that we shouldn't send anyone there to fight their war for them*. But as we pointed out two years ago, the minute this shifted from them doing what they could with what they had, to doing what they could with what the West would supply, it meant the end of Western aid would also mean the end of Ukraine. So, before anyone advocates cutting them off, they need to answer how the tactic of pulling out down the road worked out for the U.S. in South Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They should show all work for that answer.
It does mean that Putin hasn't run out of toes on his feet to keep shooting yet, and that no one in his inner circle has worked up enough guts to hold a Makarov Retirement Party for the Russian Captain Ahab. Yet.
But even if Putin survives long enough to see his press-ganged mob of sad sacks somehow stumble and bumble their way into Kiev tomorrow, one has to wonder who in their right mind thinks the surviving Ukrainians would just roll over and forgive, and settle back into Russia's yoke. Let alone forecast that the rest of Eurostan and most of the world not getting cheap Russian oil would ever end sanctions or forget Russian aggression. Russia is going to be a pariah state for the next century. Enjoy that whole sh*t sandwich, and swallow every bite. Sweden and Finland have already given their answer, anchoring themselves firmly to NATO. Vlad's adventurism has managed to do more to revive NATO in two years than Reagan and the Bush family managed to do in twenty.
Salesman Of The Century props to Vlad for that, alone.
One invasion speaks more eloquently than a thousand harangues.
The Usual Suspects will root around, and find someone like The Saker or some other tired old KGB mouthpiece to cheer them up with more bedtime fairytales about inevitable Russian invincibility, but millions of people who live in the real world, from retired shipyard workers in Gdansk to aging Tajik, Uzbek, and Pashtun tribesmen in the Kindu Kush know better.
Maybe next year, Moscow Cubs fans. Maybe next year.
*(If anyone thinks we haven't had SF teams and military attachés there in harm's way since Day Two, and should not, you're really too naïve to be on the internet without adult supervision. The not-too-difficult trick is to remember that doesn't mean they should be covered by the 82d Airborne and TacAir. We tried that after the Gulf Of Tonkin, and it didn't work out too well. One thing does not require the other.)