Surprising absolutely nobody except the people who said that the best strategy was for Ukraine to immediately surrender.
I’ll steal that.
Others are not.
Ukraine had much smaller, and less well trained, armed forces in 2014 to use any weapons that would have been sent; much of the US aid from 2014 on was directed at dealing with capacity building and training, as well as providing basic nonlethal gear like helmets and body armor and a whole bunch of core logistical equipment. Weapons are necessary, but not sufficient, for an effective military.
I think west as whole should really focus now on trying its best to make sure russians can't do high tech anymore, military or not. Can't stop such country making dumb ammo and cannons but nothing fancy.
Kyiv recapitulating Kabul was basically every Western analyst's assessment until at least several days into the war. If Russia had executed a lightning strike there would have been little war and, likely, few long-term consequences.
But it's also important to know that Ukraine's army today is far different than that of 2014. In 2014, Ukraine's army was far more like Russia's in training and leadership, except it also had many pro-Putin leaders that have now been purged from leadership. There has also been a big change in style of leadership, as has been shown throughout this phase of the war.
In 2014, there was an argument for doing more:
https://www.armytimes.com/opinion/2014/11/28/opinion-a-case-...
You mean his policy of building up the capacity of the Ukrainian military so that they could stand against Russia might be validated by Ukrainian victory now? Or are we going to timewarp into an alternate reality where we instead rush them arms and convince them to fight to the death over Crimea in 2014 to prove that that policy would have been wrong?
They’re all appalling but really effective. They’ve been trained well.
Try to read something you know very well in the media and understand that there is no reason for other parts that you know less to be more correct (even if you believe naively that there is no propaganda).