At what point during our discussion have we agreed on a comparison point of January 2023? It seems as though you’ve deliberately picked the high water mark of the war (from Ukraine’s perspective), with the intention of then comparing today’s situation negatively to that. Where has January 2023 come from? Why not compare to March/April 2022 when Russia was at the edge of Kiev?
Can you see the point I’m making? You’ve picked an arbitrary point in the war, which, likely due to the significant Ukrainian gains of the previous 6-8 months, was probably when expectation was at its highest and naturally at its most unrealistic.
And I think you’ve done it purposely, with the intention of representing your negativity as realism.