No. of Recommendations: 7
Indeed. And Putin has more meat to throw into the grinder. Which is why it's vitally important to get the Russians to the bargaining table to get some kind of settlement going.
After a cease-fire has been established, the business of re-arming and re-building the Ukraine can begin. The status quo just means that Zelensky runs out of dudes much faster than Putin does, and when that happens the Ukrainians lose the war.
Neither side can continue this type of fighting forever - eventually one side or the other runs into the practical limit of guns, manpower, or money and has to agree to wind it down. You're wrong in assuming that it would be Ukraine who runs into that first. Fighting a war is expensive, and Russia isn't getting enough money from other sources to keep this going much longer. Nor do they have a reserve of manpower - they've raided the prisons and now have to get troops from North Korea, which is not costless in terms of political commitments from Russia and China.
Getting the Russians to the bargaining table only helps if there's something Ukraine can get. Otherwise, they're just losing the war - even unconditional surrender ends with the parties at the table where the victor dictates the terms to the loser. The "bargaining" only comes about if both parties have something to offer the other and the ability to walk away and resume fighting. Which means that Ukraine has to be both able and willing to walk away from the bargaining table and continue the war if Russia doesn't agree to something acceptable. Which means not having the U.S. cut them off at the knees publicly before they get to the bargaining table.
Doing that was a bad choice if the U.S. had any desire to see an outcome of the war short of Russia achieving everything they want. Trump doesn't seem to care about that, for a number of reasons - he's interested only in the war ending, not what the outcome of the war is. Ukraine obviously cares a great deal about the outcome of the war, and if the only proposal on offer is Russia getting everything they want, they'd prefer to keep fighting until Russia is willing to come to the table with something they can accept.
