You don’t have to look too hard to find commentators outside of Ukraine declaring that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed or is failing.

Russia still occupies a whole big chunk of Ukrainian territory, so the counteroffensive — now starting its fifth month — clearly hasn’t accomplished its objectives yet. And while it’s clear that Ukraine couldn’t have waited another year, by launching the counteroffensive this summer, they did so with considerable disadvantages. The Ukrainians are outmanned, outgunned, and their air force doesn’t have control of the skies. Kyiv had to start the offensive before all of that aid from NATO arrived; those Abrams tanks that the U.S. promised in January didn’t arrive until September 25.

But take a look at what’s happened since the counteroffensive started:

Considering all that, it’s not that plausible to contend the counteroffensive has failed. Has it kicked all the Russians out of the country? No, but these are the intermediate steps Ukraine must take the accomplish that objective.

Ukraine isn’t losing; it’s more accurate to say Ukraine is on pace to win at a painfully slow rate, with an enormous cost in blood and treasure. This is still not a great situation for the Ukrainians; they can’t afford to lose men at the same pace that Russia does.

But even if you see no value or merit in standing with a people who are fighting against a foe that’s talking up the need for concentration camps and reeducation of the Ukrainian populace, the Ukrainians are still doing all of the dying and the bleeding and the fighting in a war that has destroyed thousands upon thousands of Russian armored vehicles, tanks, personnel carriers, artillery, mobile missile launchers, helicopters and planes, and ships and submarines. The U.S. and NATO have effectively outsourced a job to the Ukrainians, the job of destroying a Russian war machine that has been a threat to Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. All the Ukrainians are asking is that we keep giving them the tools to fight the war – and as I’ve noted, they will continue to fight what they see as an existential fight with or without our help. The only question is whether we prefer for the Ukrainians to fight this war with weapons we can spare, or to try to fight off the Russians with whatever they can scrounge from the rest of the world.