Mr. Dunn's genocide apology useful idiocy is easily refuted by evidence. With a failed, incompetent military, Putin's last hope is western appeasers that undermine full support for Ukraine, just as Franco's best hope in the Spanish Civil War was anti-interventionist western appeasers.
"Russia isn’t operating in a vacuum. They are responding to what we do"
--Genocidal Russification in the Russian empire's non-Russian periphery started long before western involvement. It was Peter the Great's and Catherine the Great's policy. The first prohibitions of the Ukrainian language began under Crimean Loser 1.0, Nicholas I, whose portrait hangs in Putin's office, and Alexander II. The river of bigoted genocidal exterminationist rhetoric coming out of Putin's mouthpieces and Russian media is an indigenous Russian product whose correlation to western behavior is a very simple number: zero. Grievance-driven narcissistic Russian imperial nationalism stems from the yawning gap between Russia's imperial ambition and its real capacity as a state, as Stephen Kotkin makes clear (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMyrb8-Jd3c&t=90s).
"we still had wars after that."--But no 19th and 20th century type wars between rival great powers and empires after 1945. At Bretton Woods in 1944 the European empires that had fought each other for resources and market access signed up to an American-led liberal international order that decoupled sovereignty from resource and market access. Ally with the American security umbrella and you get rich with everything you've just spent the last three centuries fighting for. All the post-1945 wars were cold war proxy wars or counterinsurgencies of limited scope. If Russia stops fighting Ukraine, the war there ends. That would end Putin and his mafia with a flag kleptocracy since the serfs in Russia, especially the non-Russians on its oil-rich periphery, would make a break for secession as they almost did in 1991 (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Siberia).
"ill will toward Russia, hand of friendship": I speak conversational Russian, am married to a Russian-Polish-Latvian and live half the year within geopolitical spitting distance (Jurmala, Latvia) of the Russian border. The rest of Latvia calls Jurmala, Little Moscow since there are so many Russians with Latvian residency. Since my first Russian history course at Georgetown in 1972 I've read more Russian history and literature than Mr. Dunn will in three lifetimes of evidence-free speculation about Russia. So nobody can accuse me of Russophobia. The preconditions of "hand of friendship" to Russia:
Like Japan and Germany after WWII, Russia wears a new western-made suit of clothes that:
1. Explicitly de-imperializes Russia by converting membership in the Russian Federation completely voluntary and explicitly recognizes the territorial integrity and opens embassies in all those non-Russian republics that choose to secede through Scottish-style referenda.
2. Russia pays war reparations and agrees to war crimes trials at the ICC in The Hague for the perpetrators.
3. Explicitly acknowledges that Russian speaker doesn't equal Russian national identity, in the same way that French speaker doesn't = French nationality, Spanish speaking doesn't = Spanish nationality, Portuguese speaking doesn't = Portuguese nationality.
4. Explicitly renounces the "right to protect" Russian speakers in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Stans, etc.
5. Recognizes Ukraine's 2013 borders.
In short, reconciliation with Russia will happen when Russia de-imperializes as Japan and Germany did. If that means that the Russian empire goes the way of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, so be it.
"Eliminating Putin will very likely give rise to passionate and political insurgencies with lots and lots of guns. God knows what they will do if they get their hands on nuclear weapons in Russia."
--Plan on a return to Streltsi Time of Troubles warlordism like the end of the 17th century and in the Russian Civil War of 1918-21. Plan on seeing foreign intervention to stop the theft of loose nukes.
"Resentments will simmer", "We’re ten months into it now. All those predictions about how Russia is going to run out of weapons, run out of missiles, run out of men, seem to be off a bit. That’s uncertainty. Start negotiations now and peace could be a thing by spring."
Mr. Dunn has progressed from don't support a corrupt, weak, contingent and negotiable existence Ukraine because it's a "manufactured distraction" and "surrender (to genocide) is better than endless war" to Ukraine can't win. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy if the western coalition refuses to give Ukraine ALL the air defense, armor and fixed wing aircraft it needs to win. Ukraine already has "irreversible momentum", in the words of General Ben Hodges. The only certainty is this: moving an openly exterminationist Russia off its maximalist objectives--erasing Ukraine--without Ukrainian victory that eliminates Russia's combat power is impossible.
Mr. Dunn never explains how a negotiation proceeds without a ceasefire that freezes the conflict until Russia launches the war's round two? He e views Ukraine's existence as contingent and negotiable, which = acceptance of Russia's neo-imperial "Russkiy Mir" view of Ukraine as "not a real country".
Have any doubts about Russia's genocidal objectives, which Mr. Dunn is eternally deaf to? Read below from https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rhetoric-against-ukraine-a-collection/.
Then ask yourself how negotiating with the genocidal mass murderers of Bucha, Irpin, Izyum and Mariupol, to whom Mr. Dunn previously recommended surrender, is different from asking the Chinese of Nanjing in 1937-38, the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and the Polish Home Army in August 1944 to negotiate with the Japanese and the Germans:
"Russian economist and pundit Mikhail Khazin remarks – “They need to be partially eliminated” – YouTube video (December 27, 2016)
Ukraine has “several million people [not loyal to Russia]” who “need to be partially eliminated and partially squeezed out.”
“New Russia,” or the territories from Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhye, and Dnepropetrovsk, “should be joined to the Russian regions, with full denazification, deukrainization.”
Russia should institute a “complete ban on Ukrainian fonts, Ukrainian texts, programs on [the] Ukrainian language, on teaching Ukrainian – ie completely.”
These implementations will cause a “surplus population – let the surplus population go to the [Russian] Far East.”
"According to the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Mr. Zelenskyy is well aware of the requirements of the Russian side. “This is the total surrender of the Kiev regime on Russia’s terms,” he stressed."
More Medvedev: "“But here’s a question. Who said that after two years Ukraine will even exist on the world map? (6/15/2022)
Medvedev op-ed – “Why Contacts with the Current Ukrainian Leadership are Meaningless” – Kommersant (October 11, 2021)
Ukrainian leaders are “people who do not have any stable self-identification. Who are they, what country are they citizens of, what is their historical identity, ethnic component, what gods do they pray to?”
There are “no fools to fight for Ukraine. And it is pointless for [Russia] to deal with vassals. Business must be done with the suzerain.”
"“Deep Ukrainianism” is a fictional concept “fueled by anti-Russian poison and an all-consuming lie about its identity, is one big fake. This phenomenon has never happened in history. And it doesn’t exist now.” (April 5)
"Former Putin aide Vladislav Surkov in Q&A – Surkov: “I’m Interested in Acting Against Reality” – Actual Comments website (February 26, 2020)
Surkov’s “vanity is forever satisfied by the fact that [he] put [his] hand and head into the building of a new Russian state.”
There is “no Ukraine,” although there is “Ukrainianism” – a “specific mental disorder. Surprisingly brought to the extreme degree passion for ethnography. Such bloody lore. Muddle instead of the state. There is borscht, Bandera, bandura. But there is no nation.”
Putin – “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” – Kremlin (July 12, 2021)
There is “no historical basis” for the “idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians.”
Ukrainization was “often imposed on those who did not see themselves as Ukrainians.”
Modern Ukraine is “entirely the product of the Soviet era” shaped on the “lands of historical Russia.” Hence, Russia “was robbed.”
"Pavel Gubarev, described as Russia’s “DPR figure” in Donetsk, tells those in the annexed regions that Vladimir Putin’s forces “aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you”. “But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: one million, five million, or exterminate all of you....”
Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin – Telegram posts by Volodin – Telegram (March 15 – Oct. 13, 2022)
“In the end, everyone should come to the realization that we have one country, and we are obliged to defend it. And there shouldn’t be another!” (March 15)
“Ukraine has lost its sovereignty and is on the verge of self-disintegration.” (July 21)
"Ukrainian statehood is Moloch [a pagan deity], to whom children are sacrificed. This filthy idol must be destroyed, it has no place in history.” (July 27)
“The forces that seized the Mother of Russian cities and other lands of historical Russia are anti-Russian, anti-Christian, anti-human.” (July 28)
“The Russian world is returning to its natural borders. I am sure that this process will continue."
Pro-Putin pundit Timofei Sergeitsev op-ed – “What Should Russia Do with Ukraine?” – RIA Novosti (April 5, 2022)
“Nazi, Bandera Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and the West’s tool for the destuction of Russia, we do not need.”
The “denazification” of Ukraine entails “a set of measures in relation to the nazified mass of the population, which technically cannot be subjected to direct punishment as war criminals.”
Analysis: Denazification in “official Russian usage just means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation. A ‘Nazi,’ as [Sergeitsev’s article] explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to [him], the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the ‘nazification of Ukraine.’ Indeed ‘any attempt to build such state’ has to be a ‘Nazi’ act.” – Snyder
There is “no significant distinction between the APU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished.”
In addition to Ukrainian defense forces, “a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power.”
These masses can be denazified through “re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, bit also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education.”
“The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification.”
Denazification will coincide with “de-Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities.”...
"Ukraine is historically “impossible as a nation state, and attempts to ‘build’ one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization.”
Analysis: “As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at the moment those actions become public knowledge. From a legal perspective, the existence of sucha text (in the larger context of similar statements and Vladimir Putin’s repeated denial that Ukraine exists) makes the charge of genocide far easier to make. Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so. Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.” – Tim Snyder
