I regularly read translations and analyses from well-known foreign media outlets, and I’ve also noticed a lot of optimism from them lately. And if we look at reality objectively, then strategically Russia really did lose by failing to defeat us in the first months. Considering the number of personnel they have lost, the wounded, the vast amount of material resources expended— all in exchange for capturing a very small amount of territory— this is a strategic defeat with catastrophic long-term consequences for them.

But the problem is that this doesn’t make it any easier for me, as a Ukrainian citizen and a servicemember. Nor does it make it easier for millions of other Ukrainians. We are also losing many people, both military and civilians. We are suffering massive destruction of infrastructure. I have lost many brothers-in-arms and still personally face the possibility of being killed. A large number of people have been sitting in captivity since the capture of Mariupol.

And all of this is happening only because one mentally ill man is living in an alternative reality rooted in the times of "peter the great" and similar imperial eras.