Ukraine Appears to have Stalled Russia's Advance – Here's what that could mean

One view of the map suggests another path: the Russians could reprise the "cauldron" pincer move and encircle fighting Ukrainians to cut them off from deep supply from the west. Either they retreat westward, or it's Stalingrad and the falaise pocket all over again.

Given Putins love to reach back to past glory, I would think this is an attractive meme for him to claim was his goal.

It leads less rapidly to the predicted worser outcome of this piece: an unjust settlement of stalemate over donbass and probably least-worst simmering resentment for decades until some kind of functional democracy returns to Russia and things settle down.

India and China lobbed shells over the border for decades and to avoid megadeath reduced the conflict to ground troops killing each other with sticks and iron bars rather than gun firing. Insanity.

Also like Stalingrad you can't supply a modern army solely by air. These encircled semi guerrilla-like Ukrainian fighters would need supply chains like the Russians do in their present predicament. A pincer move at scale could work for the russians, if they got their act together: 2/3 of their rear is either owned or client state: they could in theory fix their supply chain logistics.