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I think an underestimated political aspect of the Ukraine war is that if Ukraine wins, there's going to be a lot of carnage when they get ahold of collaborators, which is realistically the entire population of the LPR and DPR at this point. Which makes allowing Ukraine to win politically inadvisable for any POTUS. Even as allowing Ukraine to lose may be equally inadvisable.
Like the Bucha massacre, which they spent the next three years trying to blame on the Russians. This was potentially a problem in 2022, but now even a pretty solid Ukrainian win at the negotiating table probably wouldn’t include Donbas.
Has any neutral third party actually confirmed who committed the Bucha massacre? From what I can find, NATO affiliated sources claim it was done by the Russians, while Russian affiliated sources (most notably Sergey Lavrov) seem to be claiming that it was a false flag committed by Ukrainian forces. Now I'm inclined to believe that all sides of this conflict are lying about whatever is convenient for them, as one does in war since truth is the first casualty. But it looks like the bodies were visible in satellite images taken when Russia still controlled the city, if the sources of those images are to be believed of course:
https://www.bbc.com/news/60981238
Just to establish my priors about the whole war for objectivity's sake: I think the Ukrainian government is horribly corrupt and mismanaging the war, and their only saving grace is that the other side is even more corrupt and dysfunctional, but even that won't save them long term due to Russian advantages in manpower and materiel. I do think Russia is likely to win the war, but it will be a Phyrric victory consisting of control of Donetsk, Luhansk, and enough land to connect to Crimea, or something roughly along those lines (basically the current frontlines more or less). This has been more or less my position on the war since the failed attack on Kiev at the start of the war, which made me adjust many of my priors about the competence of the Russian military.
Not that I’m aware of. I don’t even know who would count as neutral at this point. It’s very odd, since both Russia and Ukraine seem to have been pretty well behaved since.
Russia always starts incompetent. Then at some point it turns around. I suspect they’ll end up getting more, because decision paralysis will keep Ukraine fighting until their army completely falls apart. It’s like how imperial Germany lost WWI: Gradually, then suddenly.
We don't really have too many datapoints for the Russia starting out incompetent then getting better outside of WW2 though. In WW1 it was Russia starting out incompetent, and ending with Russia ripped apart by a civil war and regime change that devastated them economically for 70 years.
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