Subject: Re: OT: Ukraine and Russia
BBC
Kremlin plays down Zelensky talks as Trump warns Putin may not want to make deal

Putin is not interested in ending the war. Certainly not with European troops in Ukraine or US airpower being a backstop.

Russia started this war to prevent a further extension of NATO into Ukraine [though I know there are those that would argue with that statement]. Why should it end the fighting if, in consequence, Ukraine would end up as a quasi-member of that pact? Putin wants to also permanently bar Ukraine from NATO.

This is a war of attrition and of industrial production of munitions & weaponry.
The US & Nato's industrial production is inadequate to the task of supplying adequate munitions.
The Russian population is 3.75 times Ukraine's. Yes Russia is losing more men than Ukraine. But Ukraine's manpower is finite.

https://www.newsweek.com/russi...
"From what I saw previously, and from what I'm seeing now in open-source, is that what has been building up for the Ukrainians is fundamentally a manpower issue."