NO END IN SIGHT FOR UKRAINE
Hopes for an end to the war have dwindled
A recent series of interviews with knowledgeable American officials, some linked to the Trump White House and others with long-standing diplomatic ties to Russia, has made it clear to this reporter that there is no end in sight for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine that was initiated in February 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Still unyielding, Putin is now seen by some intelligence experts in the Trump administration as vulnerable in the long run, despite Russia’s current vast superiority in manpower, wealth, and seized Ukrainian territory. There is revived talk—pernicious perhaps—about Putin being obsessed by a desire to be seen among the most famed of Russian leaders, such as Peter the Great, the eighteenth-century tsar who spent twenty-one years of warfare conquering land from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
