I read a column yesterday that sums up the dilemma in Ukraine as well as any I’ve seen. In the Times, Thomas Friedman (always good for a decisive analysis) opines that the Ukraine war is going to continue until Putin decides it will stop. But that can not happen because Russian leaders who don’t “win” get booted, sometimes violently, and this is a war of entirely his own making, without support or assistance from anyone else in Russia.
This leads to fact No. 3: Putin has put himself in a situation where he can’t win, can’t lose and can’t stop. There’s no way he can seize control of all of Ukraine anymore. But at the same time, he can’t afford to be defeated, after all the Russian lives and treasure he has expended. So he can’t stop.
I don’t claim new and exciting insights in the column, but it’s a good distillation of the things we’ve talked about since the beginning of it.