What makes you say that? I thought it was generally agreed that Ukraine has been on the back foot for a while now. People used to be quite optimistic about Ukraine recovering the occupied territories.
Russia was supposed to win easily right away. There is a huge size difference.
But if the little guy, even thought has been on back foot since the beginning, has lasted 10 rounds, and still hitting back. They are on the back foot. But now it starts looking like a win could happen. The underdog wins the crowd right? Now looks like US is the bully.
If you like Game Theory, is more as if Ukraine is much more prone to Total War than Russia possible will. Russia is spending their own GDP maintaining the war, Ukraining is "spending" its infrastructure but has foreign money being poured in.
That's why USA withdraw by Trump is so important to Russian interests.
Then there’s the “Ukraine will win as long as we keep sending aid” truth that the pubic needs to believe in order to accomplish that goal of weakening Russia since the alternative is Ukraine still loses but Russia doesn’t suffer for it.
I suspect someone misguidedly told Trump the first one, and his takeaway was that if Ukraine loses anyway, why should the American taxpayer be funding needless deaths.
If that were true, why would Putin take such extreme care for the elites in Moscow and St Petersburg? What is he afraid of? We don't need to know exactly what, but we can conclude he probably has a good reason.
Russia is not stable. The economy is creaking. Unsound, favourable loans are being made to corrupt companies who pocket as much cash as they dare while they deliver as little they can, Soviet style. Something is gonna give eventually, probably to the sound of drones over Moscow becoming the new normal.