Looking objectively, Russia has failed to achieve Putin’s “strategic” goals.

1. The war is now in its third month. Russia did not win in 3 days. And Russia is losing.
2. Russian forces not kill Zelenskyy or force him to flee. Instead they helped transform Zelenskyy into an inspiring hero known, respected, and loved worldwide.
3. Russian forces failed to capture any major city. The Russian army did capture the nuclear exclusion zone of Chernobyl, from which they retreated after digging and living in trenches in the radioactive particle laden earth, and in so doing committed war crimes against themselves.
4. Russian forces, on Putin’s orders, committed war crimes. We can argue that every soldier is a killer for the state. But the Russians in Ukraine kill, rape, bomb schools and hospitals, ransack their victims homes and bodies. As Tacitus said of Rome, “They make a desert and call it peace.”
5. Putin has created the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. 
6. Putin has strengthened NATO and the EU, strengthened Joe Biden and Boris Johnson in their home countries and internationally, helped Emmanuel Macron defeat the white nationalist (fascist) Marine LePen to win re-election, put Xi Jingping and other dictators on notice, and turned Russia into an isolated Pariah state. 
7. Putin has demonstrated the massive incompetence of the Russian military. 
8. Putin has illustrated the massive scale of corruption in Russia. 
9. Putin and the FSB (today’s KGB) has compelled a brain drain of educated young Russians, which will hold Russia back for 30 years after Putin’s removal from power. 
10. Putin has shown that he, Lavrov, Shoigu, etc. are as brutal, cruel, and insane as Stalin and Beria, as Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, and the rest. 

The truth is that the Soviet Union didn’t defeat the Nazis. The Soviets, suffering incredible losses, held them off and they might not have been able to do that without the food, clothes, cars, trucks, and ammunition that the US supplied the Soviet Union in the Lend Lease program – worth $11.3 Billion then and $180 billion today. Biden knows this. And Putin probably refuses to admit it.

Today the US is supplying Ukraine. As Biden, who like Zelenskyy has shown himself to be a mensch and an uber mensch, a man of steel with a heart of gold, says, “Don’t bet against the American people.” He might also say, “Don’t bet against the Ukrainian people, either.” As Zelenskyy says, “Slava Ukrainie.”

One final observation:

Senator Joe McCarthy, opportunist and heroin addict that he was, had a point. There could be – and there are today – politicians in America who, like McCarthy himself, will wrap themselves in the Bible and the flag while they shred the Constitution, cozy up to dictators, including Putin, Xi, MBS, etc. wanting to join them. Trump and every pro-Putin politician must answer to the voters, and some must answer to the January 6 Committee and the Justice Department.

• What did you know?
• When did you know it? And
• How much did Putin, his oligarchs, or other dictators funnel into your campaign?”