Not from the US or Europe, but I kept hearing news about Ukraine countering Russia? What just happened?

US Republicans are working towards autocratic facism in the US, and fundamental yet unspoken within that is their palpable relationship with other autocratic and autocratic hopefuls like Un and Putin.

US Republicans (and their voters) would rather live under theocratic facism than to have to share the world with people they don't understand. They believe by supporting Putin, they'll achieve their goals, which to date, has show to be an effective strategy.

Republicans, the elected ones and the ones that just vote R, have become the enemies of Democracy globally, and within the United States.

You have probably been reading propaganda. Russia has been clearly winning for over a year, and all indications are that time and attrition is on Russia’s side as well. This was quite obvious and clear from the start to anyone familiar with the history of wars involving Russia versus Europe; Russia has massive resources to tap into and an extremely educated population with extensive military and logistic legacy knowledge from the Soviet Union, which was the world superpower militarily in terms of land wars on the Eurasian continent. Russia is also a handful of kilometers from the frontline and capable of massive standardized domestic production of arms - Ukraine is getting a hodgepodge of expiring arms from all over the world in an uncoordinated piecemeal fashion. Of course Russia’s system of war is better. It’s also the soviet advantage in WW2, logistics and industrial production.

Pro-Ukrainian propaganda has been flooded through everywhere in the Western media world, so it’s likely all you have been exposed to. I recommend dabbling in Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern diplomatic and news sources to get a wider picture of what actually is going on. Ukraine is never getting back Donbas or Crimea, and they will be lucky to get out of this with Kharkiv or Odessa

Massive swell of people to make any progress to have something to campaign with for Putin's re-election. Ukraine has been generally running low on artillery and can't fully capitalize on countering large unit offenses. The Ukrainians have a lot of western equipment but are low on funds to supply them.