Putin's nuclear bluff and conventional gamble is about to pay off. Western resolve will fail before his men and material do. Muscovy has already declared war on the west explicitly in the media and implicitly by its actions.
Yet the west refuses to recognise it as such and respond as there are no kinetic effectors striking the west. Only long standing and highly effective info/psy/influence ops, spying and some deniable proxy or agent caused sabotage.
Hate to be in this headspace, but looking at the current situation officially and via OSINT not only in Muscovy and Ukraine, but also throughout the west, Ukraine is about to enter the post war insurgency phase unless another nuclear power (effectively only the UK, US or France) physically enters Ukraine as a peacemaking force or Ukrainian ally.
Solely attempting to impose a NATO no fly/no missile/no drone airspace above Ukraine will only work if the enforcers are willing and able to hit targets in Muscovian airspace that demonstrate hostile intent. Which means either a constant CAP with AWACS and tankers or forward basing in Ukraine. And the probable loss of airframes and lives.
Sanctions have and will continue to mostly fail unless aggressively (economic, political and kinetically) enforced. And if they have continue to have obvious carveouts that protect western interests. Only a physically enforced blockade (including by rail from NK and China) of sea and air passage into Muscovy might work.
Physically shipping all the needed missile reloads (and new systems) needed will take too long. As will 1-2 million rounds of artillery. By the time they are employable where needed the zero line will be a long way further into Ukraine, Kharkiv will be levelled and occupied as Mariupol was, and the black sea coast will be either taken or hotly contested with Odessa falling.
There will continue to be a flight of potential fighters, families and possibly some desertions as why lose everything when the west has proven, by their inaction, not to care about Ukraine or Ukrainians. Only hard core patriots will remain as insurgents (and the elderly who either can't or won't leave - often not thinking that the ethnic cleansing strategies employed by Rosgvardia and the army will continue if they are winning).
The US is checkmated by agents of influence/useful idiots and cannot even declare war or authorise any increase in direct kinetic activity in support if Ukraine even if it wanted to (unless in self defense which Putin is smart enough to avoid).
That said, if the northern block (Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia) supported directly by France (the UK can do little conventionally they are as gutted as Canada is) and possibly Holland, Denmark and Norway decide to honor their various bilateral/trilateral security agreements with Ukraine (and ignore NATO/the US as irrelevant within Europe currently) Muscovy will lose and relatively quickly. Finland and Poland alone in a pincer attack on Moscow would radically change the dynamic in Ukraine.
I suppose it is still possible that various NATO countries could release enough of their military to join a Ukrainian Legion as formed and equipped units that the tide could be turned but I see that as even less likely than actual intervention.
I hope to be quickly, dramatically and thoroughly proven wrong. But without US arms even funds from other countries or wealthy supporters/crowdsourcing is too little too late.
Ashamed to be a member of a NATO country.