Those sources are nearly universally portraying Ukraine as heroically beating back the Russian assault with brave resistance that is taking a huge toll on the invading forces. But, says MacGregor, in fact, Putin's forces have already achieved many of their objectives and there is little, if anything, Ukrainian forces can do about it at this point. "What Ukrainian forces are still active are entirely surrounded, cut off, and isolated in various towns and cities," he told the "Gray Zone" podcast. "The Ukrainian forces are incapable of anything but a pinprick attack on something that doesn't appear to be very robust or dangerous. "So the war, for all intents and purposes, has been decided," he continued. "The issue for the Russians, from the very beginning, has been, 'How do we proceed without killing large numbers of civilians and inflicting a lot of property damage. And [Russian President Vladimir] Putin gave very strict orders from the outset that [his forces] were to avoid such things. "The problem with avoiding it is that it has slowed the progress of the operation to the point where it has given false hope to most of the Ukrainians" which "has been seized on by people in the West to try and convince the world that a defeat is in progress when in fact, the opposite is the case," MacGregor continued. "So the war itself at this stage of the game could be decided very, very rapidly -- permanently -- if Putin were to give the order and allow the forces to disregard the concern for civilians and property damage." Putin appears to have given that order, according to reporting on widespread damage being inflicted on Ukrainian cities by numerous media outlets that are not always focused on the same images and locations.