After six months of duking it out with a putative superpower, Ukraine and its rock star president, Volodymyr Zelensky, have emerged “bloodied, but unbowed.”

Embolden by the ability of Ukraine’s highly motivated fighters to exploit Russia’s many battlefield blunders and equipped with an ever-growing arsenal of modern Western weaponry, Zelensky, who once practically begged Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate, now calls for total victory and the complete expulsion of Russian troops from Ukrainian soil.