Even during the period of wild optimism in the United States during 2022 and early 2023 about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russian forces, there was a small, dark cloud of doubt about what the Joe Biden administration would do if the prospects of victory unraveled. That question has now become more pertinent and urgent as Kiev’s vaunted offensive clearly is faltering. Territorial gains in Russian-occupied regions are minimal, and they have occurred only with great cost in the lives of Ukrainian troops. For Ukraine’s forces, the war has become a meat grinder reminiscent of the fighting in World War I. Attacks on entrenched Russian defenses have proven to be horrifically costly in terms of both personnel and military hardware.

The U.S. has prevented earnest negotiations and prolonged the war in Ukraine.

After enthusiastically selling the war since its inception, the mainstream media in Europe may be beginning to change its tune.

Newly disclosed State Department memos conflict with the narrative Democrats crafted since 2019 impeachment.

Getting a count of Ukraine’s dead that isn’t the output of someone’s propaganda machine is difficult to do. But the number of dead is indisputably a horror. Measuring the maiming of Ukraine solely in deaths, though, is an injustice to the depth of the Ukrainian wound.

The war in Ukraine has reopened Europe’s eyes to the horrifying realities of the wars of history. Battles fought almost entirely by artillery barrages, trench warfare, mass assaults through minefields; the kinds of combat not seen in the world since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, or World War II in Europe.

Nicolas Sarkozy said Putin was ‘not irrational’ and the conflict could be ended with new referendums in the Russian- occupied territories. Ukraine said the proposal was based on ‘criminal logic’, while a French MP accused Sarkozy of being a ‘Russian influencer’.

The government is worried

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dragged on with no end in sight. The fighting has ground to a near standstill, with thousands of lives being traded for miles of territory. The situation has delighted the political establishment in Washington, who see throwing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers into the meatgrinder as a cost-effective method for weakening Russia.

With Ukraine’s counteroffensive all but halted, the time has come for Washington to push for peace—particularly given that Russia might launch a new offensive in 2024.