US fighting Russia 'to the last Ukrainian': veteran US diplomat – The Grayzone

What's telling here is that he doesn't specify what, exactly, we should be doing to "accelerate an end to the fighting". Obviously any "acceleration" would have involve some significant concessions or compromise. Which Freeman knows of course. He just doesn't want to come out and say what these should be.

Oh wait... actually he does tell us, a bit further down. And what he does say is quite telling:

We should be concerned about achieving a balance in Europe that sustains peace. That requires incorporating Russia into a governing council for Europe, of some sort. Europe historically has been at peace only when all the great powers who could overthrow the peace have been co-opted into it. A perfect example is the Congress of Vienna, which followed the Napoleonic Wars, where Kissinger’s great hero met in it, and others had the good sense to reincorporate France into the governing councils of Europe. And that gave Europe a hundred years of peace. Of course, there were a few minor conflicts, but nothing major. And after World War I, when the victors—the United States and Britain and France—insisted on excluding Germany from a role in the affairs of Europe, as well as this newly formed Soviet Union, the result was World War II and the Cold War. So, it’s really depressing that instead of trying to figure out how to give Russia reasons not to invade countries and to violate international laws as it has—that does not make Russia unique, of course—but instead of trying to give Russia reasons for being well-behaved, we have, in its view, left it with no alternative but the use of force.

Paraphrasing: "At the end of the day it's all a misunderstanding between imperial powers (in the Belle Epoque mode). Including all this raping and plundering and shooting anything that moves. Russia just feels left out and unheard, and we know what the inevitable consequence of that is. If anything it's our fault for leaving them with no alternative. We just need to give them a (bigger) seat at the table, along with an end to all this messy sanctions and threatened prosecutions for war crimes and stuff. To give them, you know, a reason to be well-behaved."

He also makes an interesting (and unfounded) reference to the 2014 "coup" against the Yanukovych government -- a view shared only by certain far left and right commentators (and of course, the Russian government).

And this bizarre counterfactual assessment of the situation on the ground (presumably around mid-March):

At the moment I understand the Ukrainian forces, although they’ve lost their command and control, there are major units that are surrounded and in danger of being annihilated by the Russians.

And his equally bizarre labeling of "Russophobic countries" in Eastern Europe. And making the insinuation that, like Austria after WW 2, Ukraine needs to be denazified and policed in regard to its treatment of minorities (in exchange for an end to all the raping and plundering that Mr Putin has been forced to resort to):

So, even though from the very beginning the solution has been obvious, which is some variant of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, meaning a guaranteed independence in return for two things: one, decent treatment of minorities inside the guaranteed state; and second, neutrality for the guaranteed state.

Weird, this guy. Just weird.