Comment by petcat
3 hours ago
> Did they not ask Ukraine to give the already occupied land and then some?
Ukraine is never going to retake the territory they've lost without European soldiers on the ground. Macron famously said that he would have to send troops to Odesa and yet 3 years later there are still no French troops in Ukraine. Meanwhile Putin has captured even more land and is now actively bombarding Kyiv.
It is painfully obvious that Europe lacks the political will to do any kind of substantial intervention. The war is at a complete standstill and it will last for another horrible decade if no concessions are made.
It's the unfortunate reality of the situation.
Not being able to take the territory, having a ceasefire over the territory, and actually conceding the territory are three different things. The world is full of unceded occupied areas. Korea. Taiwan. Northern Cyprus. Palestine. Nagorno-Karabakh. Transnistria.
Ukraine rightly has no interest in ceding land to achieve a temporary ceasefire to allow Russia to re-arm and then attack again.
Meanwhile it is also important that we don't have two nuclear armed states (France and Russsia) officially at war.
I'm not excited to have France and Russia in direct conflict, but having two nuclear states at war would not be anything new. There's been China/USSR, India/Pakistan, India/China, and if you want to consider wars that mostly exist on paper at this point, North Korea/USA.
>The war is at a complete standstill and it will last for another horrible decade if no concessions are made.
There is a slight hope that the current Russian regime will collapse before then and be replaced by one that doesn't want to continue the war. (Though, that said, it could equally well be replaced by a regime that's even more ultranationalist than the current one.)
While Europe certainly does lack the political will to make a substantial intervention, it's not just a question of political will. There is the small matter of not starting the third world war to consider.