Concedes Russia could win war? I'm fairly certain Putin has already achieved a good part of his main objectives.
His troops have secured a solid land route to Crimea.
He's seen that, for the most part, the Western leaders are a bunch of pansies.
If, as many people have speculated, the next BRICS meeting in June ends up with a counter to SWIFT (which they've already been working on), Russia will pretty much be better off economically than it was before the invasion.
From my perspective, the only thing left for Putin to achieve is to get a peace treaty with Ukraine saying "accept current borders (or, maybe, trade back the territory Russia captured up near Kharkiv in exchange for the rest of Donetsk and Luhansk), don't join NATO".
What else is there for Putin to do? Conquer all of Ukraine? I mean, maybe, but I don't see any benefit to that.
In an opposite of "what if they declared a war and no one came", it is for him to declare the war against Nazism won again on May 9 while the Ukrainians will fight on until every last inch of their land is liberated.
They fought on for about a decade after WWII even when it was actually hopless with them completely alone against Stalin's ruthless methods. (Their own methods were actually just as ruthless, matching the Soviets in brutality if not even exceeding them.)
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Concedes Russia could win war? I'm fairly certain Putin has already achieved a good part of his main objectives.
His troops have secured a solid land route to Crimea.
He's seen that, for the most part, the Western leaders are a bunch of pansies.
If, as many people have speculated, the next BRICS meeting in June ends up with a counter to SWIFT (which they've already been working on), Russia will pretty much be better off economically than it was before the invasion.
From my perspective, the only thing left for Putin to achieve is to get a peace treaty with Ukraine saying "accept current borders (or, maybe, trade back the territory Russia captured up near Kharkiv in exchange for the rest of Donetsk and Luhansk), don't join NATO".
What else is there for Putin to do? Conquer all of Ukraine? I mean, maybe, but I don't see any benefit to that.
In an opposite of "what if they declared a war and no one came", it is for him to declare the war against Nazism won again on May 9 while the Ukrainians will fight on until every last inch of their land is liberated.
They fought on for about a decade after WWII even when it was actually hopless with them completely alone against Stalin's ruthless methods. (Their own methods were actually just as ruthless, matching the Soviets in brutality if not even exceeding them.)
Is Ukraine a legitimate state then, taken over by western powers in 2014, after disposing of the legal power?
The parliament was the legal power.