With how NATO reacted to Russian attack on Poland, we can safely say that everyone is now on their own, those 5% spendings on defence don’t even matter, because US doesn’t keep its word, and there are fifth column countries like Hungary that could just veto potential article 5.
No doubt. But let’s not pretend things are normal. The emperor of the U.S. is owned by Putin, and that’s very bad. Things would be very, very different with just about any other person in the world as preisdent. But - even with that massive asset in their column - Russia are still not performing any better on the ground. Trump, as he always does, overplays his hand and attempts to use leverage he doesn’t actually possess. The U.S. has very little left to influence Ukraine or any other country short of direct military intervention, which is probably even still too dangerous to consider getting away with. They already tried threatening invasion of allies in Canada and Greenland, moronic sanctions to try and create a global recession that would make countries more interested in their own economic woes than supporting Ukraine. They cut almost all direct support and instead are having Euope buy US arms for Ukraine, which in theory is good for the US Defense industry. At this point, purely European support and increasing arms production sovreignty is probably enough for ukraine to continue resisting for a nearly indefinite period of time. Should it be this way? Of course not, but this is a messy but permanent divorce for ukraine to free itself from a 1,000 year enslavement project from it’s brutalist horde neighbor.
Trump is in failing health, their time to extract a favorable peace for his boss in the kremlin is drawing short. If Trump is neutered in the mid-terms, or better yet - dies before then - then things likely get much, much worse much, much faster for Russia. They are the ones talking peace terms, which in itself indicates a degrading position for them considering their initial goal of total national destruction of Ukraine. When first mumbles of peace started a couple months ago, Russia’s baseline position was “TOTAL CAPITULATION, DEARMAMENT AND NEUTRALITY”. Then it moved to “THE 4 ANNEXED OBLASTS AND DEARMAMMENT!”. Then it moved to “GIVE US DONESTK, LUHANSK AND CRIMEA!”. In a few weeks, their demands will probably be lower than that. Ukraine has shown the luxury of being able to simply reject absurd Russian demands for excessie terms, and not much else has happened, other than Orange Baby losing interest and going off to pout in the corner.
Ukraine is, of course, suffering, but haven’t REALLY been pushed hard yet. Their drone strength and missile campaign against Russian oil and gas is being felt and isn’t easily solved. They haven’t drafted people under 25 yet. Ukraine’s best bet at a lasting peace might well be to keep bleeding the Russian war machine. Russian citizenry has only JUST started to feel the pinch of this idiotic vanity project by their perverted gangster ghoul king.
