Aside from the rhetoric, there is a growing consensus among Western diplomats, military analysts, military officers, heads of state and even much of the media about how to end the endless Ukrainian war.

A proposed peace will see a DMZ established somewhere along an adjusted 1,200-mile Ukraine-Russia border.

Tough negotiations will adjudicate how far east toward its original borders Russian forces will be leveraged to backstep.

Publicly in the US and covertly in Europe, all accept that a depleted Ukraine will not have the military strength to retake Crimea and the Donbas.

In 2014, both were absorbed by Russia during the Obama administration.

Neither that administration nor any since has advocated a military effort to reclaim them.

Loudly, the US — and again quietly Europe — concedes that Ukraine will not be in NATO, a confirmation that Russia will use to justify to its people its disastrous invasion, and even many Ukrainians will accept.

How will the West deter Russian leader Vladimir Putin from his inevitable agenda of reclaiming lost Soviet territory and Russian-speaking peoples?

For now, his army is exhausted, its arsenals depleted, and its reputation shattered.

In the future, a commercial........

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