There's the real strategic concern that escalating too quickly will have nuclear repercussions. But the deeper reasons are visible if you view most governments as military industrial corporations stacked under a trenchcoat. The true motivator is that the longer the war continues, the more money will flow from their respective tax payers into their pockets. They don't care about Ukrainian lives, they don't care about Russian lives. The popular support for the war and lack of domestic casualties means they get to ply their trade of death, and they come out smelling like roses. Opposing Russian colonialism is a noble cause, but the nobility belongs to those who are dying in the foxholes, not the warmongers who are squeezing this crisis to get more capital.

Western leaders don't want Ukraine to win. They want Russia to lose. A quick cauterized wound is less damaging than a slow bleed out. Total bankruptcy of the Russian war machine is the objective, the economic elimination of their primary trade competitor.

The hesitation to do that still baffles me. Like all the pontification over providing the tanks prior to this. We all knew NATO counties were going to provide these weapons eventually. The constant hand-wringing is so embarrassing and downright disrespectful to the Ukrainians who are sacrificing everything.

I keep hoping for another big gain like Kharkiv and Kherson, but all that time let Russia dig in their fortifications and mine everything, so the line just won't move that quickly anymore.

More half-measures screwing over desperate people

If only we could get the chickenhawks here in the US to care about desperate people and half-measures within our own borders as much as you care for desperate people in a country you only care about because you're told to by your favorite nightly news program. The hundreds of billions in aid we've already sent is more than most countries' entire annual military budget to begin with.