"failed counteroffensive"

Obv you haven't been following the Avdiivka direction.  At all.

Or the Kherson direction. Or the Crimean direction.

The real battle is in the south, and RU is losing logistics, manpower and equipment.  ATACMS are now online and hitting their mark - and the F-16s will be in the air by end of the year.  Russia is losing - and will be crushed.

Strategically, Ukraine is losing the war because of the inadequate perception of the situation by society.

This opinion was expressed by the commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Dmitry Kukharchuk in an interview with Channel Five.

He claims that at the beginning of the war, all Ukrainians were ready to defend the country, there were many volunteers. But after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev, the situation changed.

"Immediately after that, I noticed that there were theses in the media that we are fighting with homeless people, that the Russian army does not know how to fight, that in principle victory will be in a week or two, a maximum of a month. That first in the spring, then in the summer, then in the autumn, then in the winter, without specifying which winter, we will go to the Crimea. That the victory is basically victorious. So people were put in a warm bathroom. We have broken down the vision of reality. But it didn't happen in Russia. They began to realize that the war was not going to be easy for them. They realized that they would have to fight for a long time," Kukharchuk believes.

He also says that the Russians are "getting stronger" every day, and if Ukraine really fought the "degenerates", it would have defeated them long ago.

"That's why we're losing. They have these processes going on, and their public readiness is much higher than that of our society. And when they talk about a nuclear bomb, a war of all against all, for some  reason it seems to me that they are ready for these processes, " the battalion commander added.

Former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has slammed the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU, lambasting the country as massively “corrupt.”

“Anyone who has had anything to do with Ukraine knows that this is a country that is corrupt at all levels of society. Despite its efforts, it is not ready for accession; it needs massive internal reform processes,” Juncker said during an interview with German outlet Augsburger Allgemeine published Thursday.

“Making false promises” to Ukrainians regarding EU accession “would be neither good for the EU nor for Ukraine,” added Juncker, who was boss at the Berlaymont in Brussels from 2014 to 2019.

“You shouldn’t make false promises to the people in Ukraine who are up to their necks in suffering,” Juncker said. “I am very angry about some voices in Europe who are telling Ukrainians that they can become members immediately.”