Ukraine: Keep The Damned Faith Straight Through To The End.

I have no time for Russian apologists or sympathizers who go on and on about alleged Ukraine corruption and why that should disqualify that country from obtaining ongoing defensive Western military aid. That matter will inevitably have to be addressed internally before European Union membership is ultimately granted. But there's no time for that, smack right in the middle of a Russian invasion that Putin has finally called a war.

Putin, because he's losing and fears above all else potentially losing control at home, is suddenly calling for bona fide negotiations to put an end to the conflict. That won't ever end this war for any number of reasons: first and foremost, this is a clear war between good and evil, just like WWII and those types of wars ultimately end only with unmitigated military victory. That's what will happen here. War crimes have been committed, mostly on the Russian side, and Putin and his entourage seriously risk being the pipers who will pay for that. 

Another reason why the war will continue is because of serial management of oligarchs and other opponents by The Kremlin: poisoning is the soup-du-jour with balcony swan dives as an eventual appetizer, if necessary. Internal opponents have to get lucky once, while Putin and his people arrange things to be serially lucky and brutally effective all of the time. It's that blood-chilling message that keeps him in power and makes damned sure that no fifth column develops internally that could take him out. 

So, like I said, this won't end like Georgia or Ukraine I. This thing goes all the way to the end. Putin is not of a mind to have the West blow Russia off the face of the Earth so the nukes will never, ever, fly. With his intelligence background, he knows perfectly well that it's not in Russia's national security interests to expand this war by attacking NATO. So, that also is a non-starter. In short, Russia is hurting, and its economy is taking a serious battering. There is no winning endgame for Russia, and Putin knows that. He would do well not to take deliberate action that would eventually corner him. How he must regret his personal folly, which is unlikely to lead to military victory, nor to the retention of much of occupied Ukraine. Watch Crimea above all else. What happens there will likely show the way ahead for the rest of the war.