The Ukrainians, now, we think have lost 400,000 men killed in battle. We were taking about 300-350,000 a month ago. the last month of this supposed counteroffensive, which was to sweep the battlefield, they lost at least 40,000 killed. We don't even know how many people have been wounded, but we know probably upwards of 40-50,000 soldiers are amputees. We know the hospitals are full. And we know that Ukrainian units at the platoon and company level... are in piecemeal fashion surrendering to the Russians. not because they don't want to fight, but because they can't fight anymore. They have so many wounded they can't evacuate them. And commanders are saying if they can't evacuate their wounded they're going to surrender because otherwise, the wounded will die.

So they call the Russians, they all speak Russian, and tell them on the radio, "We've got 40 or 5 wounded here, I'm going to surrender because I don't want them to be killed." And the Russians from the very beginning have always treated the Ukrainian soldiers very fairly and gently. So they know they're not going to be abused or mistreated. They know they can actually be exchanged for Russian prisoners in the future, so they surrender.

And I think we're going to see this army we've spent so heavily on increasingly melt away.

And at the same time, as we're talking, if you look at the long, banana-shaped strip of territory in Southern Ukraine that the Russians control, the Northeastern corner of that, South of Kharkiv, there are major offensive operations taking place right now, and Ukrainian forces are being swept away by the Russians.

All of this happens in a way that is just unreported in the West. And in the meantime, rather than admit this is a terrible tragedy that should be ended on a humanitarian basis, the killing should stop, as President Trump said, "stop the killing," we're going to continue. This puts the Russians in the unhappy position of marching further west, because from the very beginning, Putin and his advisors were never interested in a war with NATO or the U.S. That's why you've had so much incrementalism, this slow grind of movement forward. Defensive operations for a long period of time to build up force, and then continued offensive operations.

They have over 300,000 combat troops in reserve in Russia. And I think they are sitting there and not being released to fight because President Putin anticipates the possibility that we will intervene in Western Ukraine. And if we intervene in Western Ukraine, the Russians will be ready for that. And the consequences for us and for NATO will be devastating because we are not ready to fight the Russians.

...

The president announced yesterday in one of his tweets... that the people that have lost everything in Hawaii, thousands have lost everything, are going to receive a one-time payment of $700. Now, I haven't been to Hawaii in a long time... but I know that $700 isn't going to take care of a family for very long.

But in the meantime, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars continue to flow into this black hole called Ukraine, which I think is an exercise the fraud, deceit, and criminality, to be blunt. So when is going to stop? When are we going to take care of Hawaii? Let's go back to Ohio where we had the derailment and the chemical spill, 4,000 human beings living in this area, the water is still not fit to drink. We wouldn't even invest the money to move those people to a safer area, even if it meant temporary house -- or permanent housing -- until this thing was cleaned up. What have we done?

This is the problem, it is "America Last" on every level. The last people who are consulted, the last people who are benefiting from anything that goes on in Washington are Americans. This can not go on. It's got to end, and I think it will end. Unfortunately, like everything else, we're going to have to be pushed over the cliff into the abyss. I think that's where we're headed.

covering the salaries of Ukraine's first responders – all 57,000 of them.

Although Western instruction has reached many Ukrainian soldiers, it has missed the overwhelming majority. That is because Western training has been administered outside Ukraine, from locations across Europe. This distance has limited how many Ukrainians can access instruction and how customized the training can be to the terrain of Ukraine and the specialized tactics needed there. It also limits the extent to which the United States can catalyze enduring transformations in Ukraine’s defense establishment.

What happens next? Two points are in order.
First, there will be a blame game in the months ahead regarding who bears responsibility for the disastrous counteroffensive. Indeed, it has already started. Few will admit that they were wrong to think the counteroffensive stood a reasonable chance of succeeding or was sure to succeed. That will certainly be true in the US, where accountability is an obsolete concept. Many Ukrainians will blame the West for pushing them to launch the blitzkrieg when the West had failed to provide them with all the weaponry they had requested.
Of course, the West will be guilty as charged, but Ukrainian leaders have agency and could have stood up to American pressure. After all, their country’s survival is at stake, and they would have been better off staying on the defensive, where they would have suffered fewer casualties and increased their chances of retaining the territory that they now control.
The coming recriminations will be ugly and will hinder Ukraine’s efforts to stay in the fight against Russia.
Second, many in the West will argue that the time is now ripe for diplomacy. The failed counteroffensive shows that Ukraine cannot prevail on the battlefield, so the argument will go, and thus it makes sense to reach a peace agreement with Russia, even if Kyiv and the West must make concessions. After all, the situation will only get worse for Ukraine if the war continues.
Regrettably, there is no diplomatic solution in sight. There are irreconcilable differences between the two sides over security guarantees for Ukraine and territory, which stand in the way of a meaningful peace agreement. For understandable reasons, Ukraine is deeply committed to getting back all the land it has lost to Russia, which includes Crimea and the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. But Moscow has already annexed those territories and made it clear that it has no intention of returning them to Kyiv.
The other unresolvable issue concerns Ukraine’s relationship with the West. For understandable reasons, Ukraine insists that it needs a security guarantee, which can only come from the US and NATO. Russia, on the other hand, insists that Ukraine must be neutral and must end its security relationship with the West. In fact, that issue was the main cause of the present war, even if American and European foreign policy elites refuse to believe it.
Moscow was unwilling to tolerate Ukraine joining NATO. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see how both sides can be satisfied on either the territorial or neutrality issue.

In addition to those obstacles, both sides view each other as an existential threat, which is an enormous obstacle to any kind of meaningful compromise. It is hard to imagine, for example, the US taking its gunsights off Russia in the foreseeable future. The most likely result is that that the war will go on and eventually end in a frozen conflict with Russia in possession of a significant portion of Ukrainian territory. But that outcome will not put an end to the competition and conflict between Russia and Ukraine or between Russia and the West.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock . “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

Ukraine was already in a population decline . They have lost half of their population from it's previous high. Russians are capturing pregnant Ukraine women soldiers

“In a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of their own soldiers with a ten-to-one shell advantage, under constant bombardment, this is the only correct solution,” he said. Russian troops are “numerically superior in terms of personnel, artillery and aviation,” Tarnavskyi added.

And then, when the war is finally lost, when the whole country lays in smoldering ruins on a funeral pyre of their own making, the liars will say “well we tried.” Having prevented any alternative, having smeared anyone who told the truth as puppets for the enemy, the liars will say “We did our best. We stood up to Putin.”