My best guess is that it was Russia for internal political reasons aka to remove the ability of Russia to back out and resume business as usual after some conce

My best guess is that it was Russia for internal political reasons aka to remove the ability of Russia to back out and resume business as usual after some concessions. The Russian government not being a monolith, there must be factions who’d like to stop fucking around in Ukraine and get back to printing money pumping gas to Europe. The peace incentive gets much weaker with the destruction of Nord Stream.