> If [Russia] manage[s] to "get the international community to the table" and try to have "peace talks" while holding a gun in their other hand, the west might

> If [Russia] manage[s] to "get the international community to the table" and try to have "peace talks" while holding a gun in their other hand, the west might cave in and allow them taking the whole east of the country, if only Putin pinky swears to stop the war. IIRC, that's currently the expected best case outcome of this. The Ukrainians are fighting with everything they have, but the Russian Army is just plain bigger and better equipped, so they've only bee able to slow it down, not meet it and defeat it. I don't really see that changing unless the West stops tiptoeing around (at least) and offers more than halfhearted military support to Ukraine. To be clear: the West's support is less halfharted than it was before the war, but it's still halfharted (e.g. the nonsense with the Polish jets, only supplying "weapons of a defensive character," etc.).