Russia keeps the eastern half of Ukraine: ‘Hope’ emerges for ceasefire in Russian conflict

Biden will declare victory. He stood up to Putin toe to toe.

Meanwhile in reality, Putin will end up officially with Crimea in terms of recognition, probably get some territory to connect Crimea to the east on land and likely some sort of super weak neutral status on what’s left of Ukraine. And the west will fund the rebuild of the Ukrainian infrastructure and cities and the US state department and EU will hand out the contracts to their buddies. And he’ll get at least the worst of the sanctions relieved in exchange for ending this thing.

And the forced urgency of setting up ways to get around sanctions in the future with other countries will create new ways of working that don’t involve the US directly. China will be the big winner in all of this. If they do something in Taiwan or elsewhere, there isn’t going to be the same solidarity on sanctioning them or sending weapons in for the locals to fight with. Cook it.