They wanted to stay in Afghanistan even after 20 years but 2 years of Ukraine is too much.

People just keep parroting this nonsense about money being allocated to Ukraine being the problem when the actual problem is lack of industrial capacity in the west to produce weapons and ammunition at the rate they're being consumed. The west has now largely run through the existing stockpiles, and lacks the capacity to produce more in time. Mainstream western media now openly admits this https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/rate-of-russian-military-production-worries-european-war-planners

Allocating more funds for Ukraine isn't magically going to make stuff like artillery shells appear out of thin air.

This is how proxy wars go. The Republicans aren't bought out by Russia. The USA uses proxies for specific strategic goals. When the goal is achieved or becomes untenable, they cut off the proxy. That's just how it goes.

To avoid showing voters the realpolitik they need some plausible reasons for cutting off the proxy. Usually it's a combination of fiscal responsibility noise and isolationist noise. This is no different.

The USA was provoking Russia. Russia got provoked. The USA activated some sleeper cells, those cells got neutralized. The USA wanted to see Russian capabilities, they got what they could, including intel on hypersonic missile performance, but I don't know if they got what they wanted.

And then multiple fronts got opened up against the West (Niger, Palestine, etc) and threat escalations emerged in unexpected locations (Iranian missiles im Venezuela). And it's become clear the West can't produce the war machine it needs for the conflicts that are coming. So, it's time to cut off the proxy. Russia doesn't have the means to occupy Ukraine. The USA is not worried about Russian expansion, so there's no more reason to be there, except of course the rhetorical reasons that were used to mask the proxy nature of the conflict in the first place (russophobia, anti-communism, moral posturing, etc). So, to control the domestic mood, the Republicans get to play their part as dirt bags, make a bunch of rhetorical noise about why we can't fund them anymore, and psyops adds some Russiagate flavor through networks of influence to mask the reality: the proxy has outlived its usefulness and the USA is cutting them off.

Not from the US or Europe, but I kept hearing news about Ukraine countering Russia? What just happened?

US Republicans are working towards autocratic facism in the US, and fundamental yet unspoken within that is their palpable relationship with other autocratic and autocratic hopefuls like Un and Putin.

US Republicans (and their voters) would rather live under theocratic facism than to have to share the world with people they don't understand. They believe by supporting Putin, they'll achieve their goals, which to date, has show to be an effective strategy.

Republicans, the elected ones and the ones that just vote R, have become the enemies of Democracy globally, and within the United States.

They realized fighting a war of artillery and attrition against Russia is a bad idea

You have probably been reading propaganda. Russia has been clearly winning for over a year, and all indications are that time and attrition is on Russia’s side as well. This was quite obvious and clear from the start to anyone familiar with the history of wars involving Russia versus Europe; Russia has massive resources to tap into and an extremely educated population with extensive military and logistic legacy knowledge from the Soviet Union, which was the world superpower militarily in terms of land wars on the Eurasian continent. Russia is also a handful of kilometers from the frontline and capable of massive standardized domestic production of arms - Ukraine is getting a hodgepodge of expiring arms from all over the world in an uncoordinated piecemeal fashion. Of course Russia’s system of war is better. It’s also the soviet advantage in WW2, logistics and industrial production.

Pro-Ukrainian propaganda has been flooded through everywhere in the Western media world, so it’s likely all you have been exposed to. I recommend dabbling in Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern diplomatic and news sources to get a wider picture of what actually is going on. Ukraine is never getting back Donbas or Crimea, and they will be lucky to get out of this with Kharkiv or Odessa

Massive swell of people to make any progress to have something to campaign with for Putin's re-election. Ukraine has been generally running low on artillery and can't fully capitalize on countering large unit offenses. The Ukrainians have a lot of western equipment but are low on funds to supply them.

Americans who think the alphabet agencies are going to save us: ACAB includes the alphabet agencies.

hope away, the alphabet is mightly righty

They're too busy looking for pedo rings so they can chum up with them and then let them off with a "warning"

But you see, a bazillion Russians were killed during meat wave assaults with nothing but shovels to take this city that only has symbolic significance.