In the war in and over Ukraine, Russian forces are continuing an accelerating advance at the “fastest pace since 2022,” as the robustly Russophobic and gung-ho New York Times admits. On the Ukrainian side, the battlefield situation is “precarious,” the Washington Post recognizes, and signs of exhaustion and demoralization are increasing. American demands to add a whole fresh cohort of cannon fodder by lowering the conscription age, again, are finding a very mixed response.

Military mobilization is already deeply unpopular, much of it conducted by force, sometimes demonstratively so. Yet even Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s bullheaded former commander-in-chief and potential rival of superannuated president Vladimir Zelensky is now opposed to mobilizing the youngest. It has taken him a while, but he has realized that a future Ukraine cannot exist without some young males left. A majority of Ukrainians, recent polls have shown, want a quick and negotiated end to the war, with many openly acknowledging that concessions to Russia will be necessary.

Meanwhile, the US, the single most important Western sponsor of the current Ukrainian regime and this war, will soon be ruled again by Donald Trump. Having promised to end the slaughter quickly – or, at least, American involvement in it – Trump has recently sent signals that he is serious. To add some fun, he has also started sharply criticizing Zelensky, publicly – and correctly – denouncing the Ukrainian leader’s serving as a cut-out to launch Western missiles into Russia as “foolish.” Trump’s son Donald Jr. and the president-elect’s new bestie, American oligarch Elon Musk, too, have ridiculed the Ukrainian proxy leader mercilessly. And no one has chewed them out for it.

That Trump and his team are thinking of solutions Kiev will not like is also confirmed by Zelensky’s recent pattern of desperately pretending everything is fine, while also occasionally lashing out in genuine frustration: Western media have been conspicuously silent about it, but on December 9 Zelensky clearly lost it: He went public with the gratuitously offensive – and wrong as well – insight that Trump hasn’t got any influence before the inauguration on January 20, and therefore it makes little sense to even talk to him. Someone in Kiev is definitely feeling cornered.

Against this background of proxy war endgame, you’d think that Western mainstream public discourse would finally become more realistic again. And some of it is. But what is remarkable is the opposite: How much delusional thinking still persists. Take, for instance, a recent article in the Financial Times. Under the title “It’s high time to make Russia pay,” its European economics commentator Martin Sandbu is trying to make the case for fully confiscating – at least in effect if not necessarily formally – those........

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