Your "word on the street" is evidence-free Trump-style "everybody knows" and "people say". Your assertion that "nobody is willing to pay that price" to recover ALL territory lost to Russia is utter nonsense according to ALL the Ukrainians I know. Zelensky would be overthrown tomorrow if he came up with a peace deal renouncing Mariupol, Kherson and Severodonetsk.

The Ukrainians have already reached the Russian border north of Kharkhiv and those living with deportation risk in occupied Kherson can already hear Ukrainian guns firing at Russians on the city's outskirts.

Please explain why we should accord geopolitical parity to a kleptocratic mafioso petrol station, an institutional cross-dresser masquerading as a country which has a GDP less than Texas--Upper Volta with nuclear missiles in the words of Soviet Politburo member Gyorgy Arbatov.

This is all the more true now that Putin has declared himself to be the second coming of Peter the Great ready to retake the Baltic territories conquered in the Great Northern War.

Those of us living in the Baltic (Latvia in my case) and who speak Russian know that NATO is our only guarantee of security because we know Russia's track record of conquest and enserfment of neighbors. We heartily welcome our Finnish neighbors into the club, knowing full well the Finns knew how to give Russia a bloody nose when necessary.

But since you're so convinced by Russian victimhood peddled by RT, Trump, Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Marine LePen, I'd like to sell you the Vansu Bridge in Riga; Soviet built in 1981. Just a short ride from Brezhnev's beachfront villa in Jurmala a short bike ride from where I live.

And since you're so convinced the Russian military is unstoppable, how about the blue bereted angels of Hostomel, those fierce paratroopers now living the good life in the hereafter.

Or how about those tik-tok warriors for Putin's personal mafioso Kadyrov as an indicator of Russian invincibility? Kadyrov's elite guard live in the President Hotel across the Moscow river from the Kremlin since Putin knows he can't trust his own FSB or GRU in a crunch.

Reality: Russia's population is 142 million. Of its active military of 900000, only 280000 are in the army. 160000 are in the strategic rocket forces and 340000 in the National Guard meant for internal repression in the non-Russian republics and oblasts who might bolt at the first opportunity. The better trained Spetsnaz number only 17000.

Russia's military has only two core competencies: demolition by artillery and interrogation, torture and deportation of prisoners through filtration camps.