a lot of the "slava Ukrani!" types are just too far gone, and will be insisting that Ukraine "could still win" even after the western media is calling Zelenskyy an evil asiatic dictator

This is one of the chronic flaws of mass media propaganda. You get generational cohorts who are trapped in yesterday's propaganda and highly suspicious of a changing narrative. Then you get media outfits that attach themselves to these biases and feed on them to turn an easy profit. CNN gives birth to FOX gives birth to OAN.