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Last week there was a conversation on here about a potential peace deal in Ukraine. I claimed that the peace deal seemed fake since if you knew the background on peace efforts, you'd know that both Putin and Zelenskyy were playing a goofy game trying to pin the other one as the one who "doesn't want peace" in the eyes of Trump to try to direct Trump's ire in the other direction.
We now have pretty good confirmation that no peace deal will be forthcoming in the near term. JD Vance has said that the war won't end anytime soon. This backs up further reporting following the mineral deal that Trump's team was looking for ways to compel Russia to come to the table, and didn't really find any options that they liked.
The bull case for a Trump-brokered peace deal was the idea that the US could use its power to demand that both sides come to the table, and if either side tried to walk away then the US could force them back. This worked halfway, as the US has a lot of leverage over Ukraine for things like intelligence gathering, air defense, and to some extent other military deliveries. Much of MAGA hates Zelenskyy personally, and Trump was more than willing to exercise that leverage when Zelenskyy snubbed him at the WH meeting. The problem was that the other half of the puzzle was missing. Some claimed that the US could threaten Russia by promising to "drown Ukraine in weapons" if Russia didn't come to terms. However, Trump has been unable or unwilling to do this, so we had the situation where Trump could compel one side quite effectively, but when the other side did something Trump didn't like all he could do was tweet "Vladimir, STOP".
Peace is good as a general rule, and it would have been good if Trump could have gotten a peace deal along the lines of "ceasefire at current lines of control, Ukrainian defense guaranteed by Europe" so it was worth a shot. But alas, it seems like the war will continue.
The problem is Russia feels like it can simply win outright, at this point. Therefore, to achieve a peace that reflects the current EV of the war, Ukraine has to accept a deal that is worse than the current status quo. They will never do this, so the most likely outcome is a complete victory for Russia.
Russia has been thinking this for 3 years now. It wasn't true in 2023 and it wasn't true in 2024.
Assuming 1v1 in a vacuum, Russia is the most likely winner in a war of attrition due to bigger population size and more natural resources. Since international support is declining for Ukraine, the situation is heading more to the "1v1".
Winning a war of attrition isn't usually a good thing.
Beats losing a war of attrition, usually. Certainly did in WWI. Russia seems willing to take the hit. This seems crazy to me, but as far as I can tell Putin really wants a Ukraine that's part of Russia and/or under Russia's thumb, and is willing for his countrymen to pay the price to get it.
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