Subject: Re: Let’s See If This Pans Out for Putin
Good thing the French supplied enough dudes, guns and money, amirite?

Sure. Good thing NATO is also ensuring that Ukraine has enough dudes, guns and money to similarly prevent the Russian army from defeating them.

The question behind all this is whether or not the Ukrainians can defeat the Russians even with what NATO is giving them. And this is the fundamental question behind it all.

Yep. Which is why we keep pointing out to you that there are plenty of historical examples where a force that was too small to drive out the bigger army was still able to win the war anyway. Ukraine can't physically expel the Russian army from the territory by brute force. But the Continental Army never had sufficient forces to do that to the British Army, either - even including the forces provided by allies. The U.S. won the Revolutionary War because the British left. They left not because there was ever any likelihood that the Continental Army could overrun them and expel them from the continent, but because the cost of the war had gotten too high relative to the near-term prospects of beating the Continental Army.

Neither of us knows for sure.

Of course. The fog of war, etc. The point is that Ukraine's prospects of eventually winning are good enough that it's worth it to them to keep fighting, and certainly worth it to the West to keep helping them fight. The fact that they can't dislodge the Russians, and probably will never have forces sufficient to do so, doesn't mean it's a futile cause. It's happened over and over in history that a country wins a war not by destroying or driving out the other guy's army, but just getting them to realize they can't win and should just go home.