neither Europe, nor the Biden administration, nor the Ukrainians had any pathway to victory

I'm not sure if this is meant to mean "they had no plan that could work" or "there was no possible way to win". Victory was definitely possible, but the war has been incredibly mishandled by bean counters and micromanagers from washington. To the point where it seems like the goal was to kill as many people on both sides as possible.

From the outset, there are only two levels of military aid that make sense: zero, or whatever it takes. Instead they chose a slow trickle of increasing range and capability that allowed the russians to adapt and grind it out through the casualties. Not allowing strikes inside russian territory is just comical. They even had weird press conferences where they were hinting that they wanted ukraine to disobey that guideline but couldn't say it - it's like the whole thing was being run by a female erotic fantasy author.

Then there's europe who's all gung ho except for any meaningful materiel. France and UK gave a few hundred stormshadow/scalp cruise missiles and they worked - so are you going to make 10,000 more to win the war that you claim is so important? No? So wtf was the point of the hundred? Just kill some people I guess? Korn will be pleased.