There might be protests if Westerners were putting their lives on the line here, but they aren't. I'm told there are some protests in Germany about the very real hardship of losing Russian gas, but I think they see Russian aggression at fault and most would rather work around it.

Which is to say: most westerners see their governments doing more or less the right thing, and aren't protesting. They see it as highly unlikely that they've been so misled about the situation in Ukraine as to think that it should surrender to Russia.

Pacifists have always had to contend with rhetoric about "just wars", and this is one of the clearest examples they've seen in decades. They've certainly protested against many unjust Western wars -- usually not terribly effectively, but they did come out. And I think they would if they felt it was relevant now.

No amount of exposure to Russia's mass media is likely to change their minds about that. Such as today, with Russian media announcing a 99+% result in a "referendum". They can't even begin to imagine that this will inspire protests from Western pacifists.

Im actually more confident that Ukraine will have a decisive victory then I was a month or so ago.

Russia has entered the desperation stage of the war by mobilising 300k barely trained conscripts and throwing them straight to the front lines (some are already POWs).

This has shown me that Russias losses are significant and that they cannot sustain there professional army, which is the first sign things are going to go very south very quickly.