a war that should have taken a ~~real military power~~ (oh wait, I forgot the capitalization) Real Military Power less than a week to win

Does he realize he's insulting Ukraine and saying it's a pushover country? I can't tell if he's intentionally throwing shade or if he's just not really that smart.

Also while this is a policy shift, I'd say it's likely he saw how much we can sell Europe American arms and decided allowing the war to progress would be profitable; also Russia may have said they're not sharing the rare earth minerals. If you recall, he made a deal with Mali to handle their (most likely American backed) terrorists in return for rare earth minerals.