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Notes -
I meant the removal of Putin (in the current situation/short term). I think you are probably right in that all other things equal, in any given scenario with s/Putin/some other leader/, the expected value of a West/Russia peace treaty for Russia would be higher, but the "all other things equal" does a lot of work here. The current expected cost of suing for peace is surely not "unconditional surrender"; a sufficiently weak leader presiding over a sufficiently fractured Russia, though, might wind up having a negotiating position that gets arbitrarily close to that. (...and I think that sufficient weakening as a result of the power transition is more than likely, in no small part by Putin's own design.)
All in all, I still don't see a good way out for Russia - and especially not for Russian-Ukrainians except for those that had the clairvoyance to conspicuously commit to the Western horse early on - that does not depend on contingencies ranging from the very optimistic to major miracles. It seems to me that modulo high-variance paths like political transition, tactical nukes or Kesslering low earth orbit, and generic changes the feasibility of which we outsiders can not begin to estimate ("reform the military to use drones more effectively"), their best strategy really is hoping for a low-probability event, and perhaps maneuvering into a position where more distinct redeeming low-probability events become possible. To that end, what they are doing in terms of grand strategy seems basically correct: hold out for the European economy to crash and/or antiglobalist parties to come to power, reach out to China presumably urging it to accelerate its Taiwan schedule, hunker down and defend rather than engaging in any large-scale advances, ...
I guess that one is in fact somewhat plausible. I would think that in Western media, the blame for any incident at the plant would be laid squarely at Russia's feet no matter what anyway (even in the land of Putinverstehers itself, I could only find one major newspaper that would not routinely give >=equal weight to the Ukrainian shitposts claiming that the Russians are shelling themselves at the plant!), but considering everything they've gotten up to so far I would also not put it beyond them to actually delude themselves into thinking it will be not so. (Perhaps, on the other hand, all that actually matters is that the rest of the New Second World can keep its population believing that it is not so clear-cut.)
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