While American and Russian diplomats prepare peace talks, the war grinds on in Ukraine. At last week’s security conference in Munich, U.S. defense secretary Peter Hegseth said that negotiations have to be based on “the realities on the ground.” These seem to worsen with every day that passes as Russia moves closer to swallowing up the Donbass region, with its vital mineral resources.

But Zelensky’s 2023 “Summer Counteroffensive” was a poorly planned and ill-conceived military disaster.
Media attention has been fully focused on vitriolic verbal exchanges between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky blaming each other for the deteriorating situation, with occasional glimpses of Paris meetings among sidelined European leaders trying to look useful. “What have they come up with? Nothing,” commented former Spanish defense minister Federico Trillo in a TV interview.
But through the voluminous reams of print copy and air space focused on the verbiage, insults, and bluster of the past few days, some brief and virtually unnoticed statements by Vladimir Putin give clues as to his plans for a ceasefire.
Putin said on Russian Television that he expects to shake on a deal with Trump in “six months.” This is probably based on his calculations of the time it should take for his army to swarm into the main industrial cities of Donbas and for his North Koreans, Chechens. and Russian marines to surround Zelensky’s beleaguered invasion force in Kursk.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Russian military command has been transferring infantry, tank, and artillery units from the southern end of the Donetsk front around Pokrovsk, towards newly occupied northern positions in Toretsk. This is in clear preparation for a spring assault on Kostyantynivka, the closest of three main cities comprising the industrial triangle of the Donetsk valley, eastern Ukraine’s mining, engineering, and steel producing powerhouse.
Toretsk is located 13 miles southeast of Kostyanty...