If US is going to war with Canada, US took 20% of Canada and only manage to hold this 20% and then the Canadian capture Detriot. Would you consider this is an American victory?
The problem is, setting aside whether the west help is enough, the war is going to devastated Russia (alongside with Ukraine) for years to come with no strategic change and only around 20% territorial gain. But their internal economy is shot, it's nice to say Russia had 46% of GDP invested in defence, but look at it this way, that mean just 54% of money going to anything else, and defence budget is virtually pointless once this war stopped (assuming the Ukrainian didn't raise an insurgency), you can't scale back the military spending because it is going to take years to rebuild after this war, which mean that 54% or may even be 60% is what it get for the next couple of year on economic and social development in Russia. That's not going to work especially Russia is now having a high interest rate and high inflation combo (Which is what most economist called a death spiral because you usually have 1 but not the other as they are both designed to suppress one another) It is just going to exacerbate either problem and make the situation worse.
If this is how you show strength.........then I wonder what is weakness looks like.
