It Is Not Belief...

 ... it is the fact, Colonel Davies, that Russia fights a combined West. 

Otherwise, how can one explain the presence of hundreds of NATO tanks, APCs, Air Defense complexes, other weapon systems, war materiel and, not least, "advisers" on the side of VSU. Let's not muddy waters here, even WaPo is open about this now--the whole Goddamn thing was planned in Pentagon and by British military amateurs. Ukies have been merely awe-struck students who followed NATO "planning" and we can see the result of it now. I know it hurts, but Pentagon doesn't do real strategy or real serious operational planning against REAL armies or superpowers--they don't teach it in the US. US simply has no experience with fighting wars of such scale to any favorable outcome. "Brilliant" campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam are a testament to this inability. The system for such wars is simply not there, it never was. One cannot change the military "genetics" of primarily a naval power, which never fought anything but expeditionary warfare.  

But now acrimony starts, as does whitewashing of Pentagon's incompetence, because it is a combined West, not 404, which has been militarily and economically defeated in what used to be Ukraine. NATO weapon systems' manifest failures as inadequate for modern battlefield, as well as tactics, which, in the end, VSU simply discarded in favor of good ol' Soviet/Russian Combat Manuals, is a testimony to a systemic failure of the NATO views on war. Litmus test is there--Army which venerates Patton as a great general has issues with real military history and warfare. Repeating beaten to death military cliches and living a sheer fantasy which passes in Pentagon for "military science" is not a substitute for real wars' experience and ability to execute operations based on realities, not PR BS. US exposed its hollow military power to the world and that is why this acrimony starts--it is over for bullying and self-proclaimed hegemon and many are hurt and bitterly angry because of that. 

But Kubler-Ross for the combined West is now in transition from bargaining to depression, the acceptance is ahead. And no amount of words, the palliative verbiage can change the reality of a catastrophic defeat of not just US best ever proxy, but a complete collapse of the edifice of favorite myth of the "finest fighting force in history", it is not and, frankly, never was. It hurts, I know, but let's hope that in the long run it will lead to a serious reassessment of the US military-economic capability, which will be brought to the levels of America's real military needs, not the bloated and incompetent military-political bureaucracy and hollow force. I have a hint: how about reassessing own role in the world--that could be a good start.