Totally agree. It will be a ceasefire, and an open wound on both countries' fronteirs. Ukraine wouldn't be just surrendering land - they'd be walking away from millions of it's citizens - making them slaves of Russia. That ain't happening.

Ukraine isn't at a point where they have to accept those kinds of terms. The shooting might stop for now - which would STILL be a victory for Ukraine and a loss for Russia.

But time is a factor here. Post-Putin will present many challenges for Russia and opportunities for Ukraine.

Russia will be required to pay compensation to Ukraine, which will be tough on Russia, so maybe that can be used as leverage to force Russia to give back Ukrainian territories?

That would be nice. We'd all love the Star Wars ending where Gerasimov throws Putin down the exhaust shaft like Vader chucking Palpatine and the Death Star explodes. Or a fleet of F35's and A-10 Warthogs screams over the horizon to vaporize the russians to the soundtrack of Rock You Like A Hurricane. But that's movie stuff.

IRL - it will be more likely that it happens slowly and incrementally. Ukraine is in a much better position right now than the russians are. That's why they're squealing for absurd peace terms. If the war were going their way, they wouldn't even be doing that.

Day to day you don't feel like anything really matters in terms of a historic timeline. It's hard to step back and say "this is what this means".

But I try to imagine - where are we going with this? What will the Wikipedia page of 2120 say about this war? I think Russia has made an incredibly bad mistake by launching and continuing to run this war. Like, a HISTORIC mistake. The scale of failure of this idiotic invasion as an empire punching itself in the dick in a nation-wrecking way is up there with the Persians getting their ass folded 12 times by Alexander the Great.

Further, I think Russia is undergoing a Loooooooong collapse. Like the Ottoman Empire did - namely, it doesn't all happen at once. The Ottomans collapsed over 300 years in phases of declining leadership, societal corruption, military degradation, loss of trade networks, loss of diplomatic clout, loss of proftable western colonies, losing wars they were expected to win, before finally collapsing into a mostly-secular ethnic rump state of Turkey today. I think that's Russia's future - a smaller heartland west of the Urals, and they lose direct control over everything else, including Dagestan, Chechnya, Yakutia, Bashkortostan etc. That will be a messy, awful process, as there are ethnic russians all over these places which will trigger some violent migration similar to the India:Pakistan partition. And some of them will end up fighting each other, like Armenia an Azerbaijan have done. But - on the other hand....Fuck 'Em. Russia is a failed gangster state that only exports death, misery and mischief to the world. The world will be better off with something else in Russia's place. But it will be a violent process to get there.

Russia should be rich and prosperous. Few countries have ever been blessed with such gifts and advantages. But they are run by unqualified kings and barbarian gangsters who only understand pain and power.

You're very kind, thank you. Bang on, the Lyman counterattack is a great example of the weakness of Russia's 'thin as film' approach not being able or willing to consolidate their gains.

I don't know what to do. But I know that attacking Russia's economic potential is making them squeal. Should probably keep doing that. At the highest level - I think the only way to lasting peace is to keep the russian war machine bleeding until they themselves become convinced that this war was a bad idea, and that they shouldn't do it again.

When Trump or Putin are removed from the board, many other things that seem impossible now may become less so.

Exactly. Ukraine has multiple paths to victory. Russia has none. This isn’t a board game where all the Russian pieces have to be moved across a line for them to have lost.

Russia would have been way, way smarter to declare a ceasefire after the 2023 Kherson counter offensive by the Ukrainians. They would still have all the territory they’re still on 3 years later, they wouldn’t have lost another million men and god knows how much equipment. They could have said “we’ve made our point about our security”, declared that NATO had chickened out to fight them, blah blah blah.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive had just failed, their backers might have said “this is the best we’re gonna get”, Russia would have been reintegrated to the global economic system by now. Ukraine wouldn’t have gotten to the point where they could attack their oil industry, wild berries/ozon and their data centers.

But - nope. They’re greedy idiot pigs, so they have spent 3 more years dying and getting weaker and weaker.

I agree. People misunderstand his power base - he is the avatar of the real power in russia - the Security Services. He gets to play role of Rough Daddy, but it's the FSB and their skull crackers down the line that keep them in power. When Putin dies, there may be some factionalism and a power struggle, but I agree that nothing will change in terms of overall leaderhsip until then.

They do many things poorly, but they're VERY good at not letting even the tiniest ember of opposition that actually represents the people emerge. Any post-Putin power struggle will probably split along established regional ethno-corporate lines of warlords trying to seize the throne. Russia has always been an absolutist monarchy, and nothing is going to change that until the state falls apart. Which it might. But that's another story.