The west provided Ukraine with around 100bn worth of aid. Which everybody expected to result in a massive Ukrainian break through, which would lead to a quick victory.
Ukrainians were barely able to gain any ground. And according to some estimates (published in NYT), Russia ended up gaining slightly more ground than Ukraine did last year overall Now the Ukrainians are being pushed back from most of the territories they managed to re-gain with their counter-offensive. Which means they will need at least another 100bn, just to reach the same Russian defensive lines, which they already reached last year. They will need much more than that to be able to turn the tide of the current Russian advancement before that though.
How many more billions to reach the next defensive line? And how many more to reach the one after that? How many more to re-take Avdiivka? How many more to re-take large cities like Donetsk, Bakhmut, Mairupol? Crimea? How many more years will this take? How many more men?
EU and US governments are already squabbling about providing more aid to Ukraine. Two years into a war that has the potential to last for a decade at least (or until Ukraine runs out of men, which is starting to happen already). Do people really think that US and EU will keep throwing money at Ukraine indefinitely, while being faced with a huge number of domestic problems that keep piling up?
The Russians have been busy constructive massive defensive lines 20-30-40-50km away from the front lines. They have increased their troop numbers. They've embraced the new weaponry and are becoming quite effective at using it. Their military production is churning weapons out at never-before-seen rates, outproducing NATO countries on things like artillery shells.
