This article has been sitting in my "to read" file for months. It has aged quite well. The comments of your usual detractors? Not so much.

Nearly 3 months after you wrote this, Ukraine is still being ground down. The counter offensive was a dismal failure that only resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and the related destruction.

Now the US is quietly advising Ukraine to negotiate, at a time when Russia has little incentive to negotiate. Most notably because the US still holds out the option for Ukraine to join NATO. That was - as we know now thanks to the NATO Secretary General - the main reason Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, to stop NATO expansion.

You don't have to like Russia to accept that from their point of view, as long as NATO expansion is on the table and Russia is able to continue fighting, Russia has every incentive to continue fighting. If they don't, then Putin faces huge domestic backlash for not getting the one thing that is most important to Russia in this entire horrible situation.