[August]

Very interesting take on the situation by a friend of mine:

Russia is the biggest loser here, followed by Ukraine. This is a foreign policy catastrophe on China's part - they banked on a grand alliance that could pressure the US on multiple fronts, and what they got was a united West and a US that can militarily focus exclusively on China. EU comes out ahead in security, but they'll foot most of the bill both in the cost of rebuilding and repaying Ukraine's debts, and in paying higher prices for US LNG exports to replace Russian energy.

US spent some chump change and sent some old weapons, and is going to reap far outsized strategic gains. The Russian military is shattered with no US deaths. We're going to be selling LNG, which we produce basically for free, to most of Russia's former market. The Russian arms industry will be crippled by sanctions, and they'd be an unreliable partner selling gear that's been shown to underperform even if that wasn't the case. US arms manufacturers are going to find lots of new markets (think India, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc). Russia's influence in the Middle East will wane, Iran will be weakened without a major partner, and the US backed Israel/Saudi alliance against Iran will be strengthened. China backed a loser, and showed their hand as an aspiring threat to the west. The EU won't need any more arm twisting to shy away from Huawei and to consider China a serious military threat. And as I mentioned before, they now get to face an undistracted US military in the Pacific.

This is the largest strategic win for the US since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Hard to argue with all this but I am sure someone here will!