Russia only negotiates when it feels it can longer get what it wants by force. It then switches to maximalist, zero-compromise give-me-something style demands to the point of absurdity.
But what should Ukraine do? The Russians and their U.S. proxies are pushing for concessions, with zero hard security guarantees. The ‘realities on the ground’, as they’re very fond of saying, aren’t such that Ukraine should be happy to only lose 20% of it’s territory, including all the human, resource and industrial potential that that includes. U.S. material support is barely relevant to Ukraine’s ability to resist the 2025 version of the Russian Terrorist Army strategically.
Indeed, what should they do? U.S. leverage is less than Trump would have you believe. Russian capabilities are not getting markedly better by any measure. Their small, slow advances are not adding up to strategic defeat for Ukraine. Ukraine has many more ‘cards to play’ before they, and Europe, should accept that this is the best time to…well…surrender, and let the russian re-tool for an obvious Next Glorious Invasion in a couple years.
Maybe the wisest plan is to keep fighting. Keep bleeding the Russians until they howl, and their terms get better. They aren’t reasonable actors - they’re trying to eradicate Ukraine completely. Politicallly, militarily, culturally. And that’s not old news - Putin said this last week. Fight until the last Ukrainian is dead. How can you even consider negotiating with such clearly genocidal hatred.
You will lose your bet 🙂
And end to this war will unleash an absolute carnage in the Russia. Soviet Union collapsed largely because 70000 soldiers trained to the Soviet way of war, which consists 60% of raping and torturing human beings, returned to civilian life. They were impossible to rule and they were violent. Then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, those 70 000 led to violence of 1990’s and the rise of an exceptionally violent kind of a mafia.
Now there are not 70 000 returning from the front but ten times that, 700 000. Plus, the Russia has half the population of what Soviet Union had. The 1990’s will be a sunny day at a beach compared to what’s coming up. And that will come up even if the Russia is victorious.
The Russia can maybe survive that if they get a very big and unambiguous victory. Then the population will be so happy about what their nation gained that they will be less unhappy about being raped (and maimed in the action).
Atop that, in Afghanistan not all that many Russian soldiers actually died or got maimed. In this war there are several hundred thousand dead orcs. And twice that many Russian cripples.
Imagine yourself as a 27-year-old woman being violently raped by a Russian veteran of the war in Ukraine, after your dear husband got killed in the same war, without your country having gained anything really useful. You will feel all the horror of what’s going on in that horrible moment, but while hoping for the situation to end soon and you maybe staying alive, you are are also very aware that this is happening to you because of Kremlin. There will be hundred thousand cases of this situation happening. Some victims will not be 27 but 63, or 14, but the story will be the same and it will repeat everywhere, and it will repeat often. To same women, by varying “men”, even. How willing will you be to do your part in holding up the Russian unity? Nobody will feel a need to be a part of the Russia.
So, if the Russia does not win big time and unambiguously (and maybe even in their beat case scenario…), there will be such a maddening amount of instability that we cannot imagine it. The Russia is much better off destroying its economy by staying in a war they know they will lose than quitting it, because each year the carnage is pushed further into the future is one year without that upcoming horror.
As long as the war continues, the Russian Federation will remain in one piece. After that, it gets impossible to rule over the various colonised regions. If the Russia gets every square centimetre it currently occupies and gets that recognised as Russian territory, that will not be enough of a victory to salvage its future. It will be destroyed by powers from within. That means, it will have de facto lost.
And it will not accept that.