[caoilte]

> And the amount spent is a pittance to western governments

I don't consider well north of $100billion and climbing to be a pittance.

> We could, and imo we should, give Ukraine to means to win.

And yet we haven't. The Ukrainians are still rationing artillery fire, appear to have lost most of their air defence cover and long ago lost air cover.

If we were serious about winning the US government would have switched to a planned economy (as we did in WW2), taken control of munitions production and gotten a handle on our out of control military contract padding.

> But I would say there is a calculation going on the US about stringing out the war longer

That's certainly one way to spin trying to lose more slowly.

> Also what outcome do you want? We surely don't want Russia to win this and think its great and start more wars and repress more people. I think we should care at least.

a negotiated peace. Tricky given all of the times the US has betrayed Russian trust over the last ten years. The only plausible route feels like a massive neutral DMZ (probably everything east of the Dnipro) administered by a BRICS led UN peace keeping force.

Hugely embarrassing for the West and NATO, but would end the killing and devastation and allow us to concentrate on the real threat of climate change.

[megous]

> The only plausible route feels like a massive neutral DMZ

How is that even remotely plausible? It would be absolutely unprecedented in scale, Ukraine would have to cede protection of massive amounts of its territory in exchange for Russia doing what? Stop trying to unsuccessfully advance frontlines and be saved from counteroffensive?

It makes no sense to me.

[_kbh_]

> I don't consider well north of $100billion and climbing to be a pittance.

You may not but the west does, the US is spending less then 10% of its yearly military budget and is mostly giving Ukraine stuff that was going go be replaced soon anyway.

> a negotiated peace. Tricky given all of the times the US has betrayed Russian trust over the last ten years. The only plausible route feels like a massive neutral DMZ (probably everything east of the Dnipro) administered by a BRICS led UN peace keeping force.

Why should Ukraine trust a negotiated peace with a country who already has multiple international agreements to not invade them?.

Ukraine already has a negotiated peace agreement with Russia it’s called the Budapest memorandum it didn’t stop them invading in 2014 or 2022.

All a negotiated peace does is allow Russia to rearm itself and try and grab more land.

We have tried appeasing Putin in the past when the west did nothing about what happened in Georgia, Chechnya and in Ukraine in 2014.

Appeasement doesn’t work, the only thing Russia understands is force so the only way this works out well for the rest of world is if they suffer a huge defeat.

I don’t see this working unless the DMZ starts on Russias side of the pre 2014 border.

> Hugely embarrassing for the West and NATO, but would end the killing and devastation and allow us to concentrate on the real threat of climate change.

If you want to really end these threats then get Russia to leave Ukraine. But I have a feeling you don’t want that to happen.