Happy cakeday. And yeah deescalation requires both parties to open to de-arm not only one of them.

Honestly though the best case scenario of how this all ends doesn’t really look great to me.

Either Russia loses the war, the government destabilizes, a power vacuum is formed which causes a power shift in a way likely to lead to more aggressive action in the future.

Or Russia wins the war, eyes other countries after it settles into Ukraine, NATO/US need to respond or else it sends the wrong message to other countries allied with them, and we head for WW3

Edit: There is also the idea of a stalemate and this just becomes a continuous war that doesn’t really end, but honestly I can’t see that being stable long term.

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