Because anyone who thinks an agreement that gives Russia the Donbas etc will end the war hasn't the brains God gave a crowbar.
All it does is give Putin time to rebuild his decimated Army and economy. It returns the initiative decision making back to Putin.

Currently Russia is slowly losing.
As long as there is backing from a Europe united on the importance of this Russian invasion being defeated, Russia doesn't have the wherewithal to win.
Russia can only compete with isolated countries that would be completely self dependant.
Against an alliance of individually weaker nations,Russia can't compete.(nukes aside)

Logistics,logistics,logistics.

 

I’d quote Hamlet but the room isn’t right. Direct support for cruelly fatigued combat units, boosted supply lines, restored spending and arms packages are urgent to critical if Kiev is to hold beyond this Summer.

Cut the lights in Moscow next Tuesday? If Russia wants any stability at home going forward, tell the Prince of Darkness to goose step over to the table.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/w...-pokrovsk.html

 

Distance Pokrovsk to Kiev northwest along the river past Zaporizija is about 500km/300 miles.

 

Seriously? Russia started this with all its stored gear from the Cold War, a population of 147 million people, and a gdp of $1.48 Trillion. They have since expended the vast majority of their Cold War hardware and been under sanctions for the last four years and - not incidentally - taken in excess of a million casualties. Demographically, they are in better shape than Ukraine, but that is damning them with faint praise.

Russia’s population has been declining since 1990 and, because the fertility rate is less than 2.1, will continue to decline.
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Meanwhile the population of the EU alone is 450 million with a GDP of $21 Trillion add in the UK (69 million people, $4.6 Trillion GDP, and you have over a half billion people and $25 Trillion. And you think Russia is going to somehow conquer Western Europe? Get serious. Russia hasn’t been able to conquer more than 20% of Ukraine in four years and Ukraines population at the start of this was only 42 million with a GDP of around $200 billion. And you seriously expect them to be able to threaten the EU and United Kingdom who have a combined population TWELVE TIMES THAT SIZE and a combined GDP 14-15 times that of Russia?

You, my friend, are delusional.

 

Four years running and excargodog is still playing 'And the Band Played On' like it's a brand new hit.

 

And you are still doing ad hominem attacks because you can’t counter a single fact posted. But since you are interjecting yourself, can YOU tell me of any war throughout history won by a country with a twelfth the population and economy of their adversary?

I didn’t think so.

 

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

There are no formal peace talks in progress or scheduled . If there’s any movement on brokered terms, Zelenskyy alone will verify it. Fat chance he or his exco signs off on a shill ceasefire arrangement. And the band played on.

 

You left out two entire paragraphs of my post.
They covered 3 items.
1. Difference between reconstituting the old USSR and other countries that were controlled by the USSR but were not Soviet Republics.
2. The 3 USSR Baltic Republics would be safe due to NATO. (that whole EU economy thing you speak of)
3. I specifically stated that the other European countries would be in danger of attack IF NATO was dissolved. In that case we are no longer speaking of the EU population or economies. We are speaking of a fragmented country by country situation.

By omitting the middle two paragraphs you changed my post to fit your response.
Your response did not address the situation presented in my post, and is hence just word salad.

Did you deliberately edit my post, or did the middle 65% just get dropped by the computer gods?
Also see post #41.

 

what, you mean this sort of ad hominem garbage?

Explain how MY goal is the breakup of NATO? I, like damn near every US administration sine TRUMAN and certainly the Bush,Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama, and Trump administration has been encouraging our NATO Allie’s to actually fund their militaries at a level that would provide DETERRENCE. After 1991 pretty much ALL the rest of NATO (Eastern European countries like Poland and Estonia excepted) DRASTICALLY cut back the funding of their own militaries. Even after the Russians seized Crimea, all they did was establish an ASPIRATIONAL goal of getting to 2% of. Their gdp OVER A TEN YEAR PERIOD which MOST OF THEM WEREN’T even on a timeline to meet three years ago and which some of the major economic powers (Spain, Turkey, Canada) are already failing or just barely managing to do.

)https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blog...nding-targets/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk25k47dlgo

https://www.turkishminute.com/2025/0...-sipri-report/

So yeah, NATO has become ineffective due to 35+ years of our NATO ally’s failing to do their part, but I scarcely see that as Trump’s fault (who has at least extracted a PROMISE from them to build up NATO conventional forces and how you make the gelding of NATO into one of MY aspirational goals is lunacy.

Clearly, if these nations are going to continue to underfund their militaries than NATO will be ineffective. Just as clearly, blaming that on Trump or me personally is ludicrous.

So what “other “ non-NATO economies are you currently assuming the Russians will be going after.