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The Big Serge has a good overview of the RU-UA war. The TL;DR is that Ukraine has burned through multiple iterations of armaments and is now reduced to begging for active NATO matériel, hence Germany's reticence to send Leopards. One should understand that Europe's and even America's production capacities have atrophied badly over the decades. Losing hundreds of tanks - the number that Ukraine is asking for - isn't something you replenish within a year.
Serge's prediction that Ukraine will lose the war "gradually, then suddenly" seems plausible given Russia's attrition strategy. If we assume that Russia will win this war, then the question needs to be asked.. how much will actually change? Ukraine as a country isn't particularly important and the population is likely to be hostile to Russia, meaning that to integrate it into Russia proper will be difficult if not impossible.
I keep hearing hysterical rhetoric that the West must win this war or... something something bad. It reminds me of the flawed 'domino theory' that was used to justify the Vietnam intervention. While I don't think NATO will ever proceed towards direct intervention á la Vietnam, I can't help but think that too many of the West's elites have trapped themselves rhetorically where Ukraine's importance is overblown for political reasons (so as to overcome domestic opposition towards sending arms) and it has now become established canon in a way that is difficult to dislodge.
Let me see. The domino theorists said if the communists win in one country, they'd try to take over more. But in fact, in your universe, that wasn't what happened. There was no attempt by communists to take Korea (half-success), Viet Nam (success), Cambodia (success), Cuba (success), communist takeovers all over Africa, communist ownership of Eastern Europe (including brutal suppression of any attempt to create even minimal independence), invasion of Afghanistan, and so on, and so forth. In fact, it sounds weird why anybody would support such a flawed theory, given the facts that communists never intended to spread their ideas internationally, promote World Revolution and actively sponsor revolutionary forces all over the globe. It's all pure "hysterical rhetoric".
To be precise, in a particular region. The Domino Theory is that once communism has a foothold in a region, it will spread across that region unless halted by extreme measures, like tough anti-communist dictatorships or supporting civil wars against the communists. So, if you want to avoid those extreme measures, don't let communism gain a foothold.
Communists took over Russia, then most of the former Russian Empire and Outer Mongolia, then Eastern Europe. (Confirmation of the Domino Theory)
Communists failed to advance across Korea in 1950 and didn't spread into Japan. (Confirmation of the Domino Theory)
Communists succeeded in advancing across Vietnam in 1974-1975 and took over Cambodia/Laos. They did not take over more of SE Asia due to the US's willingness to back very tough anti-communist governments in Thailand, Indonesia, the Phillippines, Taiwan etc. (Confirmation of the Domino Theory)
Communists took over Cuba, then took over Nicaragua. They did not spread over more of Central and South America due to the US's willingness to back very tough anti-communist governments in the region and do everything possible to undermine communists in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Chile. (Confirmation of the Domino Theory)
Communists took over Guinea in 1958, the Republic of the Congo and Somalia in 1969, and by 1975, African communists had taken over Benin, Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. The spread of communism across Africa was slowed by the tolerance of the South African and Rhodesian regimes by the US and its allies. It was finally stalled by supporting anti-communist guerillas in Angola and Mozambique, who took up the efforts of the Cuban soldiers who had been pivotal to communism's spread in many of these countries. The last triumph of communists in Africa, Burkina Faso in 1984, was stopped by a military coup in 1987, which many link to France (Confirmations of the Domino Theory)
This empirical evidence for the Domino Theory is not decisive - for instance, you could argue that US involvement in Vietnam actually precipitated the revolutions in Laos and Cambodia - but the historical evidence is at least prima facie on the side of the Domino Theory. It became unfashionable for the same reason that the idea of communist infiltration because unfashionable: after McCarthyism, the US intelligentsia began to view US conservatives as a bigger threat to them and their social democratic/democratic socialist ambitions than the communists, and the Domino Theory was seen as a US conservative charade.
I am generalising about the US intelligenstia, of course. For example, Sidney Hook was a democratic socialist who nonetheless never succumbed to the temptation of seeing US conservatives as a bigger threat to democratic socialism than Soviet communists.
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