> I think at this stage Russia will keep going until it achieves its objectives, main ones being replace Ukrainian govt with a Russian friendly government, The

> I think at this stage Russia will keep going until it achieves its objectives, main ones being replace Ukrainian govt with a Russian friendly government, They made this goal impossible when they attacked Ukraine in 2014. A government that's pro Russia is no longer electable. Zelenskyy could resign and however would replace him would be more anti Russia as well as whoever gets elected next time. Anyone sucking up to Russia would get impeached and could not win re-election in any case. If Russia succeed in making Ukraine a dictatorship with a pet dictator its likely he would be overthrown very quickly. Even if they were able to conquer Ukraine they'd have to occupy it militarily indefinitely at great cost > annex the Russia speaking regions, This seems to pretend that those regions are any more happy to be joining Russia then the rest of Ukraine. Also it ignores that many people are changing to speaking Ukrainian even among people who immigrated from russia and people whose Ukrainian was not great until recently. > demilitarize Ukraine. Ukraine would never agree to this after what Russia has pulled. > Whether the current US strategy makes things worse or not is an entirely different question, because you have to take into consideration things like the ability of the US to support Ukraine, The US can keep supporting Ukraine as long as it wants to. The only reason it wouldn't is if a crazy guy was in charge and he decides to backstab our allies and undermine/destroy our government and national interests. > the likelihood of Ukraine winning with the support, Winning is hard but at least with US support Russian victory is practically impossible > how much the support can hurt Russia in the long term The main reason US wants to damage Russia is to prevent it from conquering Ukraine or from attacking other countries after that. >the number of people dying from this, the risk of nuclear war, etc Compare with risk of giving into nuclear bullying which encourages more bullying and makes nuclear weapon use much more likely in the medium term. The safer move is to call their bluff