Anybody with a functioning brain understood that Ukraine could not win this war long before it started. Obama said this plainly back in 2016:

Obama declares Ukraine to be not a core American interest and that he is reluctant to intervene in the country, because Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there. “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”