It’s not a foregone conclusion that it is a good thing. Some strategists like Peter Zeihan think if Ukraine “wins” it will prompt a defensive nuclear exchange from Russia. In that case, history might look at Musk differently.
The most likely "Ukraine wins" scenario is a frozen conflict (e.g. Korea) in which Ukrainians can feel relatively secure about their future albeit without regaining all of their prewar territory. In this scenario, a nuclear tantrum from Russia seems extremely unlikely. Rather, they would probably cope by claiming they won and the rest of Ukrainian territory was sour grapes anyway.
Ukraine actually managing to retake all of their prewar territory might plausibly cause Russia to go totally insane and start nuking, but the way things are going it seems like a pipe dream for Ukraine to make that much progress. Maybe if some serious changes to the balance of force occurred, like a surprise admission of Ukraine to NATO, but this isn't very realistic.
(Anything more than that, some sort of "Ukrainian forces in Moscow executing Putin for war crimes" is just pure fantasy. So no matter what happens, relative security is the best anybody can hope for.)
That's a different scenario. You're describing an effective stalemate and, in Zehain's opinion, the best possible outcome. If Ukraine were to "win," i.e., take back all their lost territory, Zehain feels they would have the opinion that the Ukrainian thought is that the only way to prevent Russia from regrouping and trying again is to take the fight into Russian territory. This would include logistical hubs like Belgorod and Rostov-on-Don. In that scenario, Russia, already losing the war, would feel a nuclear strike may be their best defensive option.
Ukraine pushing the front into Russia is a fantasy scenario. Of the realistic scenarios, a frozen conflict has the best outcome for Ukraine; that's their "win" scenario and getting will take quite a lot of determination.
What makes you think so strongly that it's a fantasy? I'm not sure if you're conflating "Ukrainian forces in Moscow" with what I had actually said. I'm not claiming they push into Moscow. The logistics hubs I mentioned are less than 50 miles from the border; it's not implausible to me that Ukraine strikes them just to prevent them from being a staging post for yet another counterattack. I think a lot of the plausibility also depends on the level of support Ukraine has from Europe and the US.
While others think that if Ukraine makes "peace" with Russia it will simply set the stage for another invasion attempt and/or a nuclear exchange later.
