From a Quora contributor: Re the war between Russia and Ukraine

Seen a tank before. Once Dec 23
Why does no one want to give the real answer on the only way the war between Ukraine and Russia ends?

I’ll give you my answer. It’s real to me but I am not sure about the rest of the world.

Russia can’t win in the sense that Russian tank will never roll into Kyiv.

Ukraine can’t win in the sense that the territories currently occupied by Russia can’t be all liberated.

The end is in between and will be a sort of treaty that stops the fighting. We have seen that before

The problem is political more than military.

Zelensky wants to show the world and the Ukrainian people that they won the war. The only way to do so is to either defeat the Russians or to get some very good deal at the end of the war and blame the loss onto the Americans and Trump.

Putin needs to show that his special operation, that was supposed to last a few weeks, has been a success, despite the costs, and that part of Ukraine is now Russian and that at least some of the strategic objectives have been achieved.

The two positions are at the opposites and the end is therefore in “between”.

It would be virtually impossible to remove the Russians from the territory they have occupied

and we know that the end game for Russia is at least to take the whole of the Donetsk oblast

Can they do that? Probably. It will cost them a lot but they can probably do that.

Once the oblast is taken by Russia they will be probably be ready to negotiate the end of the war.

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