Smart people so often make the stupid assumption that everyone thinks the way they think. Not just in the West. Putin does this as well. But damn, it's prevalent in the West.

I think perhaps Putin may start having to fear his generals, though. He has tried to de-fang them with constant threat of death, but in the process they may become radicalised.

It's not actually just some assumption that Putin knows he is losing. He keeps firing people, which isn't something you do if you're happy with how things are going.

Anyway, it's impossible for the West to take seriously Putin's geopolitical grievances because they are not serious. They're a bunch of self serving delusions and, frankly, conspiracy theories. It's not even a question of whether or not we would even want to take them seriously, it's just logically impossible to do so.

When it comes right down to it, it's not based on any reality, it's just rooted in grievance. It's like white racist grievance here in the USA. There's no pleasing it or appeasing it, because it's quintessentially just a negative bigoted emotion, the dreams up alternate reality "facts" to justify the emotion rather than the other way around.

So that's out of the question. What remains is the blunt reality of the battlefield. Either Russia has what it takes to conquer Ukraine or it doesn't. It doesn't.

The number of people who believe they know how the west must think differently is as impressive as the wide variety of ways they know it must think differently.

I find it amusing that Putin doesn't acknowledge that he is also "The West" and that Russia has also been a colonial nation robbing indigenous peoples of their homes...they just went East. The Rus may either have been a Slavic tribe or perhaps even Scandinavian Vikings.

It really sounds like there's no way at all to negotiate with Putin. He doesn't want Ukraine, he wants to be seen as the equal to the US, and allowed to control half the world.

That's never going to happen. Despite his propaganda, the US doesn't control half the world either. The reason so many countries eagerly join NATO, is not US influence, but Russian influence. If he wants to change that, he has to change. He has to change Russia. A Russia that doesn't try to dominate and make enemies everywhere, but instead seeks peace and trade, would be respected and a powerful member of the international community. Putin has turned Russia into a pariah.

The big question is: will he ever consider the failure of his impossible dream to be an existential threat to what he imagines Russia to be? And will he be able to convince the military of that? Because that's what might make him go nuclear. That may be his only out. There's nothing that the West can do to give him what he wants.

Agreed. The people pushing for peace negotiations are people to whom Russia is no immediate threat. Such proponents don't want peace or justice as much as they want the discomfort of the current situation to end and they're fine with sacrificing those people at risk to genocide to get it.

Anyway, either this war is about Ukraine or it is not. If it's not actually about Ukraine, but rather about the west not bowing down to Putin, then what about what's going on in Finland and Sweden?

Obviously here in the world of reality, the people of Finland and Sweden have looked in horror at what has happened in Ukraine, and have decided that their best bet for avoiding that fate is NATO membership.

Or, in the world of Putin and tankies, NATO is bullying Finland and Sweden into submitting to Washington (with what, mind control lasers or something?), and once again Washington is ignoring Russia's geopolitical concerns.

In other words, Putin's losing, either way you look at it.

Mind control lasers are the worst.

https://youtu.be/urglg3WimHA

@Isaac Kuo

If it's not actually about Ukraine, but rather about the west not bowing down to Putin, then what about what's going on in Finland and Sweden?

Well, what's going on there is Finland and Sweden not bowing down to Putin.

These things are not different. Putin wants the West to bow down to him so he can control half of Europe, just like Stalin used to. Ukraine is just the first step on that road.