[tomder55]

Zelinsky a year ago was ready to discuss peace .

Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it,

Ukraine ready to discuss adopting neutral status in Russia peace deal, Zelenskiy says | Reuters

Now he calls for complete victory . He thinks Ukraine is winning . He is wrong.

Bakhmut on the brink as Ukraine signals retreat | The Hill

If Bakmut gets cut off then a Ukraine force of over 20,000 troops will be lost . Ukraine has already used up it's fighting age youth.

War in Ukraine: Uni to uniform - Ukraine's new teenage army recruits - BBC News

As Ukraine Signs Up Soldiers, Questions Arise About How It Chooses - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Ukrainian women to be conscripted as the country faces Russian forces | SecurityWomen

We need all recruits, no age restrictions: Ukraine army | undefined (tbsnews.net)

The west sends enough weapons to Ukraine to keep the meat grinder fed .

Anatol Lievin from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes that it did not have to come to this. There was a time post-Cold War when Russian leaders from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Putin all embraced a European security and economic system with Russia as a full partner

This Russian strategy was correctly seen as an attempt to split the west, and cement a Russian sphere of influence in the states of the former Soviet Union. However, having a European security order with Russia at the table would also have removed the risk of a Russian attack on Nato, the EU, and most likely, Ukraine; and allowed Moscow to exert a looser influence over its neighbours–closer perhaps to the present approach of the US to Central America – rather than gripping them tightly. It was an approach that had roots in Mikhail Gorbachev’s idea – welcomed in the west at the time – of a “common European home”.

For years, Putin didn’t invade Ukraine. What made him finally snap in 2022? | Anatol Lieven | The Guardian

What changed ? NATO under the urging and influence of American leaders expanded almost to the Russian borders .

Ukraine was the redline that was crossed in November 2021
U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership - United States Department of State