It's called duck typing. Direct comparison of the situation before and after Invasion Day shows that Ukraine may be called anything but a winner. Their only two successful counteroffensives (sorry, I will not count moronic Kursk incursion) had been enacted in 2022. They keep losing personnel, materiel, and territory ever faster since. And all that without any significant improvements when checked against Minsk or Istanbul peace talks. But, sure, Zelensky managed to claw out three additional years with his steady hand at the tiller. Nothing to see here! Don’t look up or around.

The main catch is that Zelensky clearly can’t stand any officer in his HQ to be more competent than Sprechstallmeister-at-Arms himself, and this is quite a low ceiling.

For example, Kursk incursion, aimed at pullback of Russian forces from Southern Donbass axis, fizzled spectacularly because of this very feature of his personality, which Russians seem to have already learnt, and another one, namely, that Zelensky acts like a ratchet in all his strategic decisions.

Zelensky faces a fair and direct choice: 1) elections, graceful exit, and salvage of what was left of Ukraine, or 2) debellation and collapse of Ukraine, possibly in slow motion, but irreversible all the same.