Ukes gonna be left holding the bag, US strategy at the outset was to make the conflict irreconcilable and leave russia holding a radically anti russian territory with resistance fighters, essentially they wanted to make ukraine another afghanistan and use it to sink the russian economy. Budget department checked the math and prolonging the conflict beyond this point would destroy support for the NATO narrative in ukraine even among those intended to become s thorn in Russia's side. Putin's hand is better now than the outset of the war and it's just gonna get better, he can take ukraine and demolish the NATO narrative and dominate resistance fighters politically for prolonging an already painful defeat, and he gets better ports and can repair trade a bit or he can just keep the territory he has and make ukraine cling to the EU and drag them down, political support for ukraine will be hard to kill after laying it on so thick, popular vote would pull ukraine into NATO and the EU, with the anti NATO narrative he could push, ukraine might come to resent their allies for pressing them into a suicidal conflict only to be displaced by all the niggers in europe and the middle east.