Chris

I tend to agree.

The absence of war is not the same thing as peace. There is highly credible evidence of rape and torture of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in the occupied territories, as well as the kidnap and ‘re-education’ of Ukrainian children on an almost industrial scale. An armistice in which Russia retains control of any Ukrainian territory simply surrenders those people to their fate as well as giving Russia breathing room to regroup and then come back for more. Anyone who thinks this is not what would happen, 5 or 10 years from now, has not been paying attention to how Russia has been treating its near abroad for the last 20 years or more.

Regretfully, the only way Ukraine can have actual peace is to fight for it, and the only way it can do that is with Western support because Russia’s material advantages far outweighs Ukraine’s. Ukraine’s best weapon - apart from Western munitions - is that Russia’s imperial arrogance is such that it never troubled itself to develop strategy or weapons tech that could actually overcome a peer. They thought they could just roll into Kyiv and once that became untenable, they have resorted to using their surfeit of expendable men and rusty old tanks to try to win by weight of numbers. As long as Ukraine has the weapons to absorb this, eventually - even if it takes another year or more - Russia can and will be exhausted.