Former President Donald J. Trump would tell the Russians, Ukrainians and Europeans to “figure out what a peaceful settlement looks like,” Senator JD Vance, his running mate, says.
Purely strategically, the best bet is for NATO to fund and lend/lease materiel to Ukraine sufficient to make the Russian effort protracted and expensive. Maybe Ukraine can solidify some territorial gains in Russian oblasts enough to have bargaining chips. From there it is just a game of finding acceptable off-ramps. Maybe a treaty gets signed that trades territory back to something like the “original” borders circa the beginning to the current conflict.
Russia clearly doesn’t care about personnel losses (and historically never has). But maybe if it drags on, the conflict will become economically and politically costly enough that Putin is looking for offramps.
Putin doesn’t give a shit about personnel losses but Russia very much does, even if it doesn’t know it yet. So many young men have been erased from the economy, either by them fleeing the country or being killed, it will affect Russian economy negatively for decades
I have to cynically agree - worse, Ukraine must cynically agree to it as well for survival. NATO has kept the war bracketed to keep it so expensive russia will eventually collapse, but not expensive enough that it would be evident to russia and they’d pull back. This is a horrible price in ukranian and russian lives, but they got putin to pay it to break russia.
Purely strategically, the best bet is for NATO to fund and lend/lease materiel to Ukraine sufficient to make the Russian effort protracted and expensive. Maybe Ukraine can solidify some territorial gains in Russian oblasts enough to have bargaining chips. From there it is just a game of finding acceptable off-ramps. Maybe a treaty gets signed that trades territory back to something like the “original” borders circa the beginning to the current conflict.
Russia clearly doesn’t care about personnel losses (and historically never has). But maybe if it drags on, the conflict will become economically and politically costly enough that Putin is looking for offramps.
Putin doesn’t give a shit about personnel losses but Russia very much does, even if it doesn’t know it yet. So many young men have been erased from the economy, either by them fleeing the country or being killed, it will affect Russian economy negatively for decades
I have to cynically agree - worse, Ukraine must cynically agree to it as well for survival. NATO has kept the war bracketed to keep it so expensive russia will eventually collapse, but not expensive enough that it would be evident to russia and they’d pull back. This is a horrible price in ukranian and russian lives, but they got putin to pay it to break russia.