To be fair, his takes on the Ukraine war from the covid days have aged very well, and were contrarian to mainstream narratives at the time.
Nevermind that any decent person would support a people's right to live and determine their own future without a neighboring despot using all his nation's might to literally eliminate them as a people.
Quite the opposite is true. And even if it weren't, condemning all of Ukraine to the fate of the massacres Bucha and Mariupol is just plain evil.
Unreal anyone would call that kind of take "fair". Rethink your life
Russia was clearly in the wrong here, and I wish Ukraine could win, but reality exists, and we kind of have to anchor our decisions based on it or suffer the consequences.
I get it, realism is emotionally upsetting. But if you actually care about Ukraine, the only approach that can get the best outcome is realism.
> to make for this thing to end
There is surprisingly little realism among the crowd calling themselves realists.
They would absolutely love to not be sending their kids to die and selling natural resources to whomever again and traveling around the globe without sanctions.
The concessions they would have accepted at the beginning were less. However, now that they've lost so many men and risked their regime on it, they can't simply accept the same deal.
This is why the incentives that wars create are so terrible, especially for authoritarian regimes, even if they're at fault.
Who are those who would love not to send their kids to die, sell resources and travel the world? Putin? His children already live a pampered life in palaces and he himself is probably the richest man in the world, currently on a trip to India. The rest don't matter. Even the head of security services Patrushev, historically the second most powerful man in the country, is scared of Putin like a schoolboy and fumbles words before him. That has been one of the most shocking revelations since the war began: that oligarchs, security services, nor anyone else can put out even the slightest opposition. The whole country dances to Putin's whims. His only real opponent is time.
And Putin doesn't give a shit about Donbas. The aim is to restore the world that birthed him, the USSR at its peak. Russia has not backed one one inch from the 2021 ultimatum to return to the European political order of the 1980s. Any concession only confirms that attacking Ukraine was a viable strategy, that piece by piece he can claw his way closer to that goal.
Military specialists from Northern Europe estimate that Russia would be in position to attack the Baltics and Poland (and have a reasonable chance of succeeding, especially if "realists" are at the helm in Western Europe and the USA) no more than 6 months after the war with Ukraine ends.
Putin sees the mere existence of a successful Ukraine's as an existential threat. Putin initially got elected on promises that included becoming an advanced Western-style economy. He abandoned that to crony oligarchism, stripping the country for parts. Now, he and the Russian people see former Soviet state Ukraine actually becoming successful, well-off, and aspiring to EU membership. THAT can not be tolerated, because it would give Russian people the idea that they should have the same, and create a likely revolution at home.
So Putin's goal is to wipe Ukraine not only off the map, but off the consciousness of everyone in the world as Ukrainians as a people
Putin will stop until either 1) he achieves this goal, or 2) he is forced to stop.
THAT is the reality.
Thinking that Putin would somehow have accepted lesser sanctions earlier, and that he would have actually respected your new peace plan when he has never respected any other is to be played for a fool.
Allowing 1) to happen is unacceptable. Note the Ukrainians who are directly suffering the daily assaults can think as well as you can of the "realpolitik solution", and they reject it, because they know it is absolutely stupid, and leads only to rape, torture, and death — theirs, personally.
Making 2) happen is the only course of action. Ukrainians will follow it until they cannot.
If you want to stop the suffering, then accelerate Russia's exit. Garry Kasparov articulated a fine plan days ago [0]:
1: Provide complete protection of Ukrainian airspace
2: Immediately send Ukraine all the weapons it needs; no delay
3: Enforce existing sanctions. To this I add including seizing Russian and Iranian shadow fleet vessels
4: Cessation of diplomatic affairs with Russia
5: Seize Russian sovereign funds immediately and use them to power the war effort in Ukraine
This would be a start. Ukraine continuing its "long-range sanctions" is already bringing the Russian state coffers to rapid decline and looming budget crisis. Continuing it longer will force Putin's hand.
[0] https://ukrainetoday.org/five-hammer-blows-that-could-finall...
The problem is they just won't. The most important members of the EU (Germany and France) are in shambles domestically and turning far right. Both have little desire to stick their necks out to support Ukraine any further and are likely turning the opposite direction.
Also, Russia has nukes. Nobody wants to provoke that any more than necessary. If Europe weren't a feckless, fragmented military vacuum things might be different, but nothing about that appears to be changing any time soon.
1) If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends.
2) If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their land will be occupied, their leaders will be killed, their history and language will be erased, their children will be kidnapped to serve Russia.
Whether or not the EU steps up and helps, whether or not Russia uses nukes (another entire discussion), this is still the fundamental fact of the matter.
The Ukrainians know this, and that is why they must, and they will, fight to the end.
It is easy to sacrifice the land and lives of others.
Would you willingly surrender YOUR OWN city/sat/country to Putin's under those plans; do you have children and do you know what happens to captured children, particularly girls? (serious question)
The ACTUAL realism is to recognize Putin's Russia for what it is: a relentless aggressor who will respect no peace. Putin's Russia has violated EVERY "peace agreement it has ever made. "Peace" in their mind is merely a strategic pause in the conflict to regroup and rearm.
The list is extremely long, Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, Donbas, and more. Exactly ZERO concessions brought peace.
The REALITY is Ukraine submitting to such a peace would merely be buying another worse war a few months or years down the road, after Russia has had a breather and a chance to rearm. It'll just be more deaths at a faster pace in Ukraine.
If you think otherwise, I'd have both a bridge and some oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you.
Meanwhile, your view of Ukraine is years out of date and was never true.
Ukraine has been anything but "completely decimated" — they have emerged as the leading global power in drones and air defense.
As to your 'half-million who have died', they are overwhelmingly Russian fighters — the absolute f'kn aggressors, and documented war criminals, torturers, rapists, thieves and worse. Zero sympathy. If they didn't want to die they could have just stayed home.
Also recognize the absolute goal of Russia, and Putin has NOT ONCE backed off from the stated goal: The entire concept of Ukraine as a people and as a state must be eliminated.
There is not even a surrender that can be acceptable to the people of Ukraine.
There is no compromise with someone who has the goal of murdering you or genociding your people.
The ONLY realistic solution is to boot Russia from every square inch of Ukrainian land, and force it back i it's box.
You obviously haven't noticed that Ukraine is on its way to accomplishing that, both decimating Russia's economic engine, and now taking back more land than RU has taken in 2026.
The shame here is the Western countries and Russia convinced Ukraine to give up nukes in return for inviolate borders, and when Russia violated that treaty back in 2014 taking Crimea, not one Western country pushed back.
Allowing Ukraine to get wiped off the map, and Ukrainians each, individually, to be forced to abandon their identity and language, and suffer rape, torture, and death may be a "realistic" option, but it is not an option to anyone who has an ounce of morality. Perhaps you should learn about it.
The only outcome that actually works is to force despots like Putin back into their box. Preferably six feet underground.
The numbers I cited were purposely in between the Russian numbers of Ukrainian casualties (1.5M, obviously false) and the Ukrainian numbers (100k, obviously undercounted). The Netherlands intelligence service and the CSIS put the number around 500K, which could also be wrong, but intelligence services tend to have better methods than media orgs like the BBC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
As far as your assessment of 'decimated', the UN projects Ukraine will require over half a $Trillion to rebuild. For a country with a GDP per capita of $7,000...I would call that decimated unfortunately. And that's not something that makes me happy: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2026/02/23/u...
The idea that Ukraine is winning or Russia is winning on any given week is entirely dependent on which news source you're reading, and given the fog of war, unless you have actual intelligence service briefs we don't actually know how its going other than the fact the frontlines have basically stayed +/- some kilometers for a super long time at this point.
Also, the idea that Russia would not accept concessions and also that Putin being dead would be desirable (hard truth: there's people who are even more hardliners than Putin waiting in the wings), are unfortunately incomplete assessments of the reality.
Again, I don't disagree with your emotional take on this, or the moral question of who's right or wrong. But on the reality of the situation I don't think your assessment is accurate as far as what's going to get the best outcome for Ukraine.
If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends.
If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their land will be occupied, their leaders will be killed, their history and language will be erased, their children will be kidnapped to serve Russia.
There IS no choice other than to force Russia to end it.
There is no treaty or agreement Putin could sign that is trustworthy. He has broken EVERY SINGLE ONE the moment it became convenient to him.
Yes, Ukraine will take a lot to rebuild. It will also substantially increase the EU's economy when it does.
And no, the trends are NOT merely which news source or week. Russia's revenues are declining, it is selling its gold, and its sovereign wealth fund is close to gone [0]. It is exhausting military supplies so badly it is now humiliatingly reliant on North Korea and Iran. Yes, it builds some of it's own drones and missiles. Ukraine has built its own defenses against almost everything but the ballistic missiles, and that shortage is the only area in which they are losing. Russia can only get more territory by attempting to "negotiate".
And again, stop trying to act as if this is somehow emotional and surrender is rational — an even slightly realistic look at Russia's goals, and their strategy of war crimes, terror, rape, torture, and child kidnapping shows the only rational way forward is to fight to the death.
A fight to the death is literally less bad than life under Russia, on every measure of quality of life.
And that is the assessment of the vast majority of Ukrainians who actually experience it.
Stop trying to give away their land and lives as if you are somehow superior. Figure out how to argue how to help them.
Ukraine's main chance is to bleed Russia dry and make a future invasion not feasible. That needs a Russian economic breakdown and a 10 year time window to let the Europeans arm Ukraine to the teeth. Russia knows this which is why Russian "diplomatic" proposals have the clear goal to make that future invasion easier. It is Ukraine's war of independence against their former colonial master and we will see how it ends.
What's specifically?
- Russia was a paper tiger and weak
- Ukraine was going to win against a corrupt/unmotivated Russian military so it should keep fighting
- Putin had made an error and he would get overthrown
- The Russian economy was going to collapse due to sanctions
- Russia oil pipelines would freeze and never come back online without western help (this was a Peter Zeihan favorite)
- Europe would come to Ukraine's defense
- Etc.
He threw cold water on every single one of those narratives (specifically) from the beginning, meanwhile western media was busy spinning false rah-rah propaganda narratives like "the ghost of Kiev" etc.
Basically he was correct that we should not have cheered on this war. If a settlement and concessions were reached much earlier it would have been better for Ukraine (they likely would have kept more territory) and we wouldn't have 1+ million casualties and EU economies like Germany death spiraling and turning far right due to cutting themselves off from Russian energy.
My layman definition is it’s the people writing in major newspapers, the people getting paid by CNN to sit in a half circle on their news analysis shows, etc.
Is Peter Zeihan “mainstream”?
The only time I remember anyone speculating that Russia was in trouble was the short lived Wagner Rebellion - because nothing like it had happened before. But that lasted … two days?
Also you appear to have been living in a different algorithmic bubble. Joe Biden was literally on stage multiple times saying everything I listed. If a democrat US president isnt mainstream, I don’t think your assessment of reality is accurate.
If "mainstream" counts as having lots of viewers, fine.
But no one who is serious about information, especially about geopolitical information would ever mistake a numerous count of viewers for the serious multi-layer vetting and double-checking of information that happened in a serious old-school newsroom, or give them anything like the same kind of credibility.
Yet this account clearly gives such massively biased and uninformed podcasters the kind of credulous belief formerly reserved for the the likes of Chet Huntley and Walter Cronkite, which no longer exists in any newsroom today.
So, a great example of Dunning-Kruger, where the most ignorant spout the most nonsense with the greatest confidence — explains the plethora of nonsense in the posts.
And NO, those were not the narratives of any actual serious reporter or govt figure. I've followed this very closely from before the 2022 invasion; some I'd heard of as remarkably optimistic takes, and some I literally never heard of.
The entire world, including Putin, was stunned Ukraine did not fall in three days. It was pretty much universally accepted that Russia was the second best military in the world. Of course, it was also soon shown that RU was not even the second best military in Ukraine.
Only recently, since the Operation Spiderweb and the 'long-range sanctions' making serious strikes deep inside Russia disabling military targets, oil production & transport, and dual-purpose logistics, and since the RU casualties have exceeded 1000 dead/month and RU started LOSING land, have any serious people started speculating about cracks in RU's ability to continue, and those are still tentative.
Go read the writings of people with ACTUAL knowledge of Russia and Ukraine, such as Garry Kasparov, Bill Browder, Volodomor Zelenskyy, all of whom are on Xitter or Substack, since you get your media from that type of sources.
You get your information from clowns, it is no surprise you post like a clown (no insult meant to professional clowns).
CNN also has had Alex Jones on.
And the problems Germany has currently are mostly unrelated to the war.
The root cause of everything going wrong in Germany is the war and cutting themselves off from Russian energy.
The rapid de-industrialization, economic stagnation, ballooning deficits, removing the debt brake, new massive military debts, etc.
All of it is being economically felt by normal people and they’re scapegoating brown people (immigrants) as a result. If Germany still had cheap Russian gas and was still growing its economy 3% per year you would not be seeing any of this go mainstream.
I know Lenin said: "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them" but to suggest continuing the business relationship with Russia is beyond silly. It would show that Germany has no rudimentary survival mechanisms and put its viability as a political entity in serious doubt.