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Well of course the offer hasn't been made - because Russian needs Donetsk and Luhansk like they need a hole in the head. These regions never been that great, but now they're thoroughly ruined and would require billions to bring to even semblance of normal life. And there's not much anything useful to Russia there. The whole point of holding them has been to gain a beachhead for the ultimate move - subjugating and "reuniting" Ukraine with Russia. That was always a part of the plan. Crimea may be different as there's certain mythical status in the culture to owning Crimea, but nobody really wants the NRs that bad. It's just part of the ongoing conquest. There's no point of offering security guarantees for keeping the NRs because neither Russia ever intended to stop at them nor Ukraine ever will believe they intended so. If Ukrainians were desperate and on their last leg, they could accept a temporary piece to gain a respite - but that's what we had since 2014 essentially. There's no reason for Ukraine to end up in that situation again, especially now that they have the initiative and are liberating their territories, and there's no reason to assume Russia is capable of giving any "security guarantees" or is willing to do so. And how such guarantees would be enforced anyway - if Russia reneges, then what?
Security guarantee = unofficial NATO. F-18’s, HiMars, etc. $100 billion in a Ukraine owned NATO equipment.
Ukraine is getting it now, why do they need to give anything to Russia for that?
Is it in the west interest that they take it by force? Leads to some potential outcomes.
Putin goes nuclear in desperation. Doubtful but who knows.
Russia is defeated on the battlefield.
What happens the day after in these events? Does Putin get hanged by his own people? Does Russia just limp along after with less energy revenue as a client state of China until their population implodes. Does Russia disintegrate into 20 countries? Or turn into a repeat of the 1990’s but much weaker now.
I have no clue. It’s Littlefingers chaos is a ladder analogy. Maybe it’s a better world or maybe it’s a worse world.
Russia as a slowly imploding country that exports a lot commodities is a world we know.
There’s an ideal world where Putin is replaced by a new west friendly guy but do we get that world?
Most likely. Or until Putin dies and they get lucky to have somebody more sane next to the throne, which will give them another couple of decades of partial recovery, after which we're likely back to sq. 1
Not very likely, for now - the only areas with strong nationalist movements are in Caucasus, and I get distinct impression they are getting enough money and freedom from Moscow to not really want to do it on their own, on the condition that those who do think of doing it on their own are promptly murdered. As long as Moscow has any money, it'd work. And the priority of this deal is pretty high - from what I heard, on prisoners' exchanges any members of Kadyrov's forces get the highest priority, for example. The other regions just don't have any basis to separate. Maybe they'd grow it eventually, but that takes decades.
That's essentially the "lucky" branch of the first option.
I don't think there are any "west friendly" guys left anywhere near power in Russia, Putin made sure of it. And even if this guy existed, he's somehow has to take power and deal with the opposition. Even if they somehow magically had the means and the forces to do it (from where?) it'd be basically a civil war, but I don't think there are any movement to pull it off at all. Pro-western liberals in Russia are largely either in jail or in exile now, and their support on the ground is minuscule. Nobody likes to be drafted and sent to die in Ukraine, but from that to a strong capable movement is a huge distance, and pro-western forces were quite impotent at their best times, now they are virtually non-existent as a political movement outside twitter.
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