> who's queuing up to buy Russian goods now? They are a resource extraction economy and there will always be a buyer for those. > The "economic isolation/sanc

> who's queuing up to buy Russian goods now? They are a resource extraction economy and there will always be a buyer for those. > The "economic isolation/sanctions will work any day now" strategy doesn't seem to be delivering > We've proven that territorial conquest will be expensive and time-consuming Well, which one is it? If the former, why would they deescalate at all? The point is that they don't need (just) any part of Ukraine, or to save face or any of that. That's not why they started the war. Their goal is to take down the world order in which the coalition of western democracies decides what goes - after all you can't buy whole nations, but you can always influence corrupt authoritarian leaders. Until that goal is achieved, Russia will keep waging wars, while also destabilizing said democracies by financing ultra-right/populist politicians and pushing Goebbels-like propaganda and conspiracies to their people. The west simply doesn't have a choice if it wants to remain free and in control; it needs to keep up the pressure until the Russian regime runs out of money for the war and/or gets changed from within.