“We must continue to stand with Ukraine — for as long as it takes,” Rishi Sunak said Friday.

That sounds like a boilerplate, rah-rah (or blah, blah) expression of solidarity, but it was notable that Sunak used the phrase “for as long as it takes.” And after an em dash, no less.

Earlier this month, Joe Biden raised eyebrows when, during Volodymyr Zelensky’s mostly fruitless visit to Washington, the US president said America would “continue to supply Ukraine with critical weapons and equipment as long as we can” (my emphasis).

If you’re a country desperately clinging to sovereignty in the face of an invasion by an army that’s larger than yours, there’s a helluva big difference between “as long as we can” and “as long as it takes” in the context of American financial and military support for your cause.

Until this month, Biden always said “as long as it takes.” But facing a recalcitrant Congress hamstrung by Republican demands around border security, America’s commitment to Ukraine is no longer open-ended. Indeed, I’d suggest it’s no longer unequivocal.

“Without supplemental funding, we’re rapidly coming to an end of our ability to help Ukraine respond to the urgent operational demands that it has,” Biden went on, speaking alongside Zelensky on December 12. “[They] celebrated in Moscow when Republicans voted to block Ukraine’s aid.”

As Politico put it this week, “Some analysts believe [the shift from ‘as long as it takes’ to ‘as long as we can’] is code for: Get ready to declare a partial victory and find a way to at least a truce or ceasefire with Moscow, one that would leave Ukraine partially divided.”

When considered with reports that Vladimir Putin has, at times, communicated to the West through intermediaries that he’d be open to an armistice as long as the terms give him something to wave around and call victory back at home, it’d appear that realism is setting in on both sides.

Russia isn’t going to achieve its original goals in Ukraine. That much is clear. Even to Putin, I’m sure. And yet, without open-ended Western financial support and a continuous supply of arms, it’ll be difficult for Ukraine to completely expel the Russian army, particularly given that Putin views all Russian soldiers as expendable, whereas Zelensky actually cares about his people.

To be sure, Ukraine continues to embarrass the Kremlin on several fronts, most notably by striking Putin’s warships and other military vessels with drones and missiles. Kyiv, one expert told Bloomberg this week, has “basically ejected the [Russian] fleet from Crimea.” But on the actual front, Ukraine’s counteroffensive was largely a waste of resources (not to mention lives) and the same goes for efforts on Russia’s part to advance east. It’s a bloody stalemate.

On Friday, Russia unleashed what Ukrainian officials described as the largest air attack of the entire war, when the Kremlin launched more than 160 missiles and drones, hitting apartment buildings, schools and hospitals, according to local reports. Scores were injured and two dozen civilians were killed over a grueling 18-hour barrage.

“A maternity ward, educational facilities, a shopping mall, multi-story residential buildings and private homes, a commercial storage, and a parking lot,” Zelensky said, cataloguing the damage incurred across Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. “Today, Russia used nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal,” he added.

Although Ukraine managed to intercept a majority of the missiles, some got through, as the video above makes clear. All of the dead were noncombatants, or at least that was the implication.

Zelensky sent his condolences to the families of the deceased. Putin didn’t.

Ukraine vowed to respond to what Kyiv dubbed “terrorist strikes,” and Zelensky said the Ukrainian military will “continue to fight for the security of our entire country, every city, and every citizen.” Russia, or at least “Russian terror,” as he put it, “must and will lose.”

Again, Russia has already lost in the context of a war that pitted an erstwhile superpower against what oddsmakers would’ve called a hopeless underdog. Russia’s dead and injured number in the hundreds of thousands and Ukrainian tallies of Putin’s naval losses, verified by independent analysis, suggest the Kremlin is down 20 vessels, including a submarine and, famously, the Moskva. If that’s victory, then at least some Russians are probably “tired of winning” by now.

As for Ukraine, they’re just plain old tired. Not of the struggle itself, being the existential imperative that it is, but rather tired of having to kill Russians or be killed by them, on a daily basis solely because one man decided to add this — this senseless, horrible melee — to his already heinous legacy.

“Putin is banking on the US failing to deliver for Ukraine. We must, we must, we must prove him wrong,” Biden pleaded, in the same December 12 remarks mentioned above. “The US and Congress must –” he paused. “It’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point.”

Oh well, there’s always Rishi Sunak.