It's very hard to know exactly what's really going on in this war.
Bill Taylor (former US Ambassador to Ua) describes the efforts of the Biden Administration as extraordinary in managing this by holding the Ramstein Alliance together and carefully avoiding escalation.
John Bolton (former US Security Advisor) describes the US/Ramstein alliance response as 'a day late and a dollar short'
Perversely, we can agree with both takes.
Bolton also says that the Putin Cohort (Labrov, Shoigu etc) all support the notion that the break up of the Soviet Union was the fault of US/NATO and they feel totally justified in using force to rebuild the Soviet Empire. They don't see this as the invasion of a sovereign state but more the unification of one state split apart by actions of their enemy.
The West is determined to uphold a rules based international order and will support Ua as much as deemed possible.
Putin obviously knows that both current leading GOP presidential candidates (Trump & Di Santis) are 'America First' advocates and will limit military support for Ua. The GOP primaries run from Feb to June '24. Putin knows that if Trump wins the GOP nomination, then it's a completely new ball game - Putin has a real hope then that US will revert to a clusterfuck foreign policy.
The Biden Admin obviously know this also but must proceed on the basis of securing another term.
There's an imperative for the Allies to assist a Ua military victory (of sorts) within 14/15 months and there is a big incentive for Putin to stay in the game until then.
Putin is ramping up military equipment manufacture and expects current supply problems to ease by end of year.
There is a lot of factors with outcome unknown that impact on the possible end game here.
It looks like Ua will achieve decent success with their offensive - that will set the tone for an outcome. We must wait until that's well underway to get a handle of where this might go
