Have you read the article ?It's largely the view of one...

Have you read the article ?
It's largely the view of one Ukrainian Officer...the 'ABC' is not saying the counter-offensive has been a failure....unless I missed it somewhere...the heading should be a clue for you ?
And it depends how you measure 'success'...one measure of 'success' might actually be stopping the enemy from further incursion into your territory. Other measures of success might include forcing Putin to relocate his Black Sea Fleet and/or fighting his forces to a stalemate situation and/or other outcomes we don't know about....
Obviously the Ukrainians haven't made the progress they'd hoped for but War and Battles are often unpredictable and left field or badly or unplanned events occur.
There's plenty of examples in History of Battles and Wars which haven't and don't go according to plan for a variety of reasons and you're very naive if you think they don't and/or expected there would be no surprises.
But I'd wager there's at least one bloke by the name of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, whom in his initial thoughts, planning, aims and goals never for a moment expected his forces would have taken such horrific losses and still be bogged down in some apparently attritional bloody stalemate approaching 2 years on ?