A former top U.S. commander and a senior [defense] analyst with deep ties to Ukraine both say no one should be quick to draw hasty conclusions from the events of the past two weeks.

heh.

In his nightly address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country's daring military incursion aims to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks by Moscow across the border.

If you can't keep your own territory, you're not actually creating a buffer zone.

The first assumption demolished by this operation was that Ukraine wouldn't be able to regain the initiative until next year.

Huh? Ukraine is currently in a holding position within its own country, throwing a bunch of troops at a bunch of small towns in Russia and claiming it as a strategic victory is right up there with the US military in Afghanistan parking a platoon of grunts in an empty house every 20 miles and coloring in the map of Afghanistan with the "secured" color on their PowerPoint presentations.

Some observers have speculated that Ukraine was trying to draw Russian troops away from the Donbas to relieve pressure on its forces there.

This is a reasonable assessment of the Ukraine gamble...

If that was the case, Karber said, the gamble "really hasn't paid off" and he fears the Ukrainians will soon face a determined counterattack on one or both of the shoulders of the salient.

... and Ukraine seems to have lost their bet.

"I think that it's been clear for some time that Russia does not have the ability to knock Ukraine out of the war as long as the West continues to provide even the modest amounts that we are providing now."

blinken Or we can phrase it slightly differently as, "to the last Ukranian."

"It seems like they're just trying to do more and more of the same, and certainly they will have lost thousands of experienced troops and leaders that are now being replaced by those who are not as well trained or experienced. Where is the bottom of that barrel for Russia?"

Where is the bottom of the barrel for Ukraine? So long as open warfare is happening, untrained troops are going to have "opportunities" to get experience. Until there aren't any more bodies to throw into the meat grinder, nobody is going to see the bottom of the barrel.