Surrender or negotiated Settlement
the pace of the Russian advance is picking up speed.
[. . .]
this is a war of attrition and anything and everything in its totality that you can get from the combined west can never match what is the Russian side is having because they view this as an existential fight and they calculated it in the long term. They were patient and now then after almost four years they have reached critical mass and now the likelihood is the pace is going to pick up. It's going to go faster.
There is no chance for this war to be solved in a positive way militarily for the Ukraine side. That has long since gone. That evaporated really at the end of 2022, but authoritatively in 2023, and it's only gone downhill since.
[. . .]
You are going to be shocked one day when there's going to be a collapse someplace and Ukraine won't be able to function anymore as a state or as a military and then we're going to have a whole new set of problems.
At some point, you're going to have to come up with a hard decision to do what is forced upon you. I won't even call it the right thing or the wrong thing or anything else. I'm going to say what is required because if you don't voluntarily surrender this territory through negotiations and withdraw from it, then it will be taken from you. Now, you can say you don't want to do that. And the Europeans are are with this point that they think that they can hold out. They think that the Ukraine side can hold out. And so presumably behind the scenes they're saying to Ukraine, don't give in on this issue. They're apparently trying to convince Trump not to go in on this issue, not to agree to it. All they're doing is setting the stage for more Ukrainian deaths. I'm just going to categorically say this. It's it should be self-evident at this point. You are condemning more Ukrainian people to death and you will lose not just those four oblasts that that are on the table negotiations right now. You'll lose much more
you're going to see that Zellinsky is telling you in very clear ways, to anyone willing to look at the truth, there will be no negotiated settlement. This war will be settled on the battlefield. And now then it's going to be up to the Russian side to see if they can make good on their claims because President Putin the day before this speech was made, or this interview, said either you're going to do what we say. I don't care about whether you're going to withdraw from territory or we will take it by force. That is his claim. And and now then based on what Zelinsky is saying here and the actions that have come out of those conversations, it looks like they're going to put Putin to the test. It's like a game of poker. and somebody throws down their cards and they say, "Call. I call you." I think that's what's happened here is that Zelinsky has called Putin and says, "Okay, we're gonna find out. Are you bluffing or are you not?" That's where we are today. I'm very confident that that Russia is not bluffing and that calling is going to mean that whole pot is going to end up going to the Russian side.
The drone strike likely never happened. Zelensky vigorously denied it. Peskov said the Russians could provide no evidence, and urged the press to “take the Kremlin’s word for it.”
nypost.com - Putin ‘attack’ bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace
