I'd wager that they have only hardened Russia, instead of softening them up. If that was "the plan", it seems to have blown up in their faces. This war has forced Russia to get off the couch and run 7 miles every morning so to speak, like a champion boxer. Their officers and senior enlisted are now experienced, their equipment manufacturing has been has been put into overdrive, and they now know what works and what doesn't on a modern battlefield against a well equipped adversary.Yep.
Armstrong covered the plan in an interview last week where he said that Ukraine isn't supposed to win. They were just supposed to soften Russia up so that NATO can "finish the job".
My assessment is that this didn't work because it dramatically depleted both the USA and Europe's equipment, and it wasn't able to be replaced. The problem with complex plans is that a lot more things can go wrong, and few things are more complicated than the production of modern military equipment. For a lot of reasons (e.g. the skills loss) Western production can't be scaled up rapidly and even in the best case scenario the entire NATO sphere can make a fraction of what Russia and China do.
Contrast that with our military fighting poorly equipped "insurgents" for the last couple decades...