The West has to save face, but is clearly aware that the only way that the war ends without being extremely costly to Ukraine is for Russia to essentially be successful and left in possession of their gains so far. We are at a point where we have to seriously think about how much damage Ukraine has to bear before agreeing to an armistice.
I have a somewhat different take. In various speeches over the years, Putin seems to have an imperialist view towards Ukraine. He views Ukraine as Russian, merely an administrative creation of the Bolsheviks, and post Soviet collapse Ukraine has become corrupted by oligarchs and western influence, according to him. Pretty good overview of Putin’s thinking in Vox, published just before the war. Worth a read:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/2/23/22945781/r…
Putin views Ukraine as part of Russia and wants to reconstitute the Russian empire. I think we should take Putin’s words at face value. Putin isn’t going to be satisfied with what he’s capture so far. Sure, he might negotiate a cease fire for now, but he won’t stick to it.
At the beginning of the conflict, Russia had a much larger and in theory much more capable military. But since the failure to capture Kyiv that advantage appears to be nearly spent. If you look at the map, there is a big salient in the Donbas. An obvious military strategy would be to cut off the salient and capture Ukrainian troops and territory. And Russia has been trying to do just that. But despite overwhelming advantages in firepower, Russia has been limited to capturing just a few villages and towns. Almost all Russia’s territorial gains were in the first month of the war. Since then, after three months of fighting Russian advances have totaled only a few square miles, and has even lost territory in the north and southwest. The war is clearly not going well. To that end Putin has fired several generals and arrested the head of the FSB. Those are not signs of a successful campaign.
Looking forward, Russian losses have been ferocious. Ukrainian losses probably have been too. But Ukraine has a draft and can replace its soldiers. Russia has to rely on volunteers. Similarly, Ukraine is being re-supplied by the West. Russia has to draw down its substantial stocks, but seems to be at least starting to run low. For example, T-62 tanks have been observed (destroyed). As the name suggests, T-62 was designed in 1962 and is decades out of date. The Russians are starting to rely on junk equipment, while Ukrainian equipment gets better and better.
I don’t know how this plays out, but the Russian offensive appears to be stalled, and Ukraine might be ready to counter attack. I suspect we are about to enter a new phase of the war. Will be interesting to watch.