According to the Daily Mail, there is now a 40 mile convoy of Russians outside of Kyiv.
I'm not telling Ukraine to surrender, but......
Beacon of Speech believes Ukraine is Ukraine and Russia is Russia. Ukraine has a fundamental right to exist. But right now, Ukraine has no path to victory. None. We made a brief pitch for a Ukrainian war strategy, but now they are in real trouble.
Moral victories will erode into war fatigue.
So using that as our premise, let's return to the election results of the 2004 Orange Revolution. Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych garnered nearly half his support from:
Donetsk Oblast
Luhansk Oblast
Crimea
Since Putin has already recognized the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, you treat them like Luxembourg and Liechtenstein and move on. You begrudgingly renounce claims to the 2 "Republics" and Crimea.
You present that to Putin. If he says he accepts, you have ceded lands that he has already corrupted.
If Putin says "too late." You go back to the map. You renounce all claims to all oblasts that had over 1% of the vote for Yanukovych on the above map EXCEPT for Odessa. Ukraine has to keep a port in the Black Sea to sustain its trade. Zelensky also offers to step down and new elections occur in the Fall.
Now here's the ruse, you are keeping the parts of Ukraine that refused to vote for a Puppet in 2004. The remaining sections of Ukraine will vote for whomever Zelensky endorses. So if Putin accepts this proposal, he will swallow up about a third of Ukraine and will have created two tiny fiefdoms. But he will have inadvertently made Ukraine stronger (in the long run.)
The first step to ensuring Ukraine continues to exist is to hold Ukrainian strongholds. Just like Solidarity in Poland was the first step to undermining the communists in Poland, Ukraine's first step to victory under the shadow of Putin and his tanks is to simply exist.
If Ukraine cedes places like Kherson (which has reportedly already fallen) Putin will be tasked with rebuilding the parts of the country which he has already bombed to the ground.
Please don't call me Neville Chamberlain, I'm just trying to brainstorm ideas with a way to ensure Ukraine continues to survive without a further loss of life. Vladimir Putin is 69 years old, if Ukraine can just manage to exist in the face of Russian aggression, one day Putin will die, or retire. The West can use the lifting of sanctions after Putin is gone to entice a future Russian President to return most of Ukraine's lands.
Listen, I know its a crappy plan. But you don't need a 10 year war and you don't need a martyred president. There is no magical cavalry arriving unless you can assassinate Putin.
If Putin says "nyet" to renouncing your claims to 8 eastern oblasts, well, you're screwed. Once all of Ukraine is absorbed into Russia, it may never exist again. If, at least, half of Ukraine can survive, you have hope for a post-Putin future. Putin claims to be a student of history, Kyiv knows history all too well.
Remember, Kyiv was burned to the ground in 1240 by the Mongols.
And it was burned to the ground in 1482 by the Tartars.
Between 1918 and 1920 Kyiv changed hands 16 times.
At the beginning of World War II, Kyiv was overrun by the Nazis in the Battle of Kiev resulting in over 700,000 Soviet deaths.
Listen, it pains me to write this, but even the Daily Mail agrees that the Russian Invasion is not failing. When Putin lectures Ukraine on history, it is an insult.
Putin used a vacuum bomb, so now he's a war criminal to boot. There's no returning to the "old" Putin.