This black hearted ghoul is truly insane if this is really his starting point. But - glass half full - at least even he is talking about an end to the war. And it's an incredible display of weakness given your initial goals of complete and total conquest of Ukraine.

I mean - look where they started from. You have to factor in the Russian tradition for Maximalist Goals in "negotiations". Give nothing, demand everything, because eventually the soft, feckless pussies who value peace will give you something you didn't have before, and you'll get MOAR if you refuse to budge. That's the theory, anyways.

But there's a problem with that "do as we say....or else" strategy. It requires that the enemy fears what you might do next. It also assumes that the threat of implied violence is likely to be more pain than the enemy can tolerate, so they will HAVE to give you something to make it stop. That might have worked at the end of WW2 where the entire world was weary of war and really didn't want to have to stop the Red Army's Western advance. The fear of what Russia MIGHT do was more useful than what they actually COULD do. The latter was a question the west didn't really want to even ask then. But today - Russians have *shown *all they can do. They're at the limits of their power, and have no right to be demanding anything but a ceasefire. And unlike WW2, the rest of the world is not suffering at all, so they're not inclined to pressure Ukraine for a bad settlement. Russia's strategy is completely idiotic and divorced from reality.

Their suddenly-spooked civilian population is showing they don't like inflation, can't even cope with gas shortages and won't tolerate a general mobilization. This is not the same society that relocated it's entire industry to the Urals ahead of the invading Nazis and worked themselves to death at weapons factories on a diet of rotten potatoes and boiled cabbage with a political comissar's pistol in their back. Their flowchart has gone from Total Conquest & Denazification -> Annex 4 Ukrainian Oblasts -> Arbitrary 2022 Agreement that makes Ukraine Neutral, Caps the Army Size, Never NATO, Russian Veto Over Everything. Next up -> Please give us something. Even the existing lines of control are not sustainable for Russia. They're fighting with men, acting like pushing smooth brain grunts into softlty defended territory until they're killed somehow makes the ground turn from Blue to Red. Ukraine is fighting with drones and treating Russian infiltration like infestation - kill them now, soon, or later, but definitely eventually. This is not calculus that works for Russia. Much like the U.S. experience in Vietnam, Russia is finding that even if you CAN take ground, holding it is the harder part. Eventually, if all you can do on a plot of ground is wait to die, then it's not worthwhile, can't be pacified and you have to eventually retreat.

We are not in Berlin in 1945 - we are in Donetsk in 2026. And the peer to peer effectiveness and raw power of the Red Army then is light years past that of the Russian army today. We're at point like in The Matrix when Neo realizes he is able to actually fight the agents and understands how to win. At the simplest level - Ukraine can keep killing Russian solders with drones, and there's nothing Russia can do about it except leave. Take Crimea for example - Ukraine doesn't HAVE to conquer it. It just has to make the Russians leave. It's doing that very well.

I mean - this is just so ludicrous as a negotiating position as to not be taken seriously, at all. Saying that the 2022 position is still valid is like Hitler, in 1945 while cowering in a blasted bunker during the Battle of Berlin, demanding that Germany should still get to keep Northern France, Poland, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Norway and North Africa, because the state of things 4 years ago should be the basis for peace now. Oh, and that there should be no reparations or consequences for this entire, brutal, pointless war.

When you've already shot your wad, so to speak, and have no other way to escalate, then Maximalist Goals is a very bad strategy, as your REAL starting point is getting worse and worse every day. His capitol is under attack, his economy is about to implode, the army is spent, the soviet hardware inheritance is gone, your benefactor China is probably growing very impatient about this dragging on and affecting the timeline for their 'territorial grievance' campaign against Taiwan. The Gift of Trump has a window of opportunity that is closing rapdily. We're 4 months away from an American mid-term election that will either neuter Trump's policies, or send the U.S. spiraling into chaos as he tries to suspend voting. That's maybe the last card Putin is waiting to see played before deciding an acceptable endgame. At the very least, though you wanted Ukraine and the other former soviet colonies, destroying america is a pretty good consolation prize. Anyways - that's another discussion.

Back to Russia - Civilians even in the heart of the Empire of City-States that truly matter are feeling the strain of inflation, gas shortages, drone attacks and the realities of an aggresive invasion in their name that they can no longer be insulated from. It's not just something happening to impure Russian Federation minorities from the backwater colonies. And they are both more used to security and comfort and less susceptible to brazen, lazy propaganda than the babushkas and smooth brain peasants of the last century who may never have even seen a radio in their lives. They smell bullshit and the cleverest among them will find ways to avoid personal involvement. Russian society is cracking.

Russia has always bluffed a threat of violence and assumed that nobody was willing to suffer real pain. Now they reached too far, got their face smashed and yet they STILL are using the same bluff and bluster to try and squeeze out a peace they don't deserve. If you're Ukraine, you probably are best to respond in kind. Screw you, is our counter offer. You get nothing. We will continue to beseige Crimea, destroy your Oil & Gas infrastructure, and drone your low functioning grunts into canned spaghetti until you come back with a serious offer that starts at 2022 boundaries, then 2014 boundaries, then 1991 boundaries. Ukraine need not give them once square inch of ground until then. The lunacy of this war will be studied for thousands of years. The scale of the imperial self-own here is hard to comprehend in daily terms, but it's on par with the Persians deciding to go show Alexander who the big dog of the age was, and utterly wrecking their entire empire instead.

Make him squeal, draw it out, endure the short term pain for a long term peace. At best - he can probably only get a ceasefire while getting out of Zaporihzia & southern Kherson. And that Ukraine thinks they can regain the rest in a post-Putin power struggle later. Probably, Russia will publicly continue to say moronic things like this, but will be more conciliatory behind closed doors. Eventually when they do stop shooting, expect a full court press on how they defeated the wicked forces of NATO and heroically showed how serious they are about their security demands.

What do you think? Let's have a chin wag.