Some Hard Truths About the Russo-Ukraine War. By Stephen Green.

For Ukraine:

Here’s a hard truth our friends in Kyiv need to remember: Lying [over the missile that landed in Poland] isn’t helpful. There are limits to our tolerance.

Here’s another: You’re going to have to make some compromises to end this war because your total victory isn’t in America’s interest here; punishing aggression is. When we decide that Russia has suffered enough, you might find yourselves on your own. Come to the table and negotiate accordingly. …

For Russia:

Here’s a hard truth for my Russian friends and their supporters: The point where Putin & Co. had hoped to aggrandize their country or themselves has long passed. It’s time to ask for a ceasefire and come to the negotiating table. …

There is another hard truth that Moscow must come to grips with: Putin threw the dice on an expansionary war but shrank his country’s standing instead.

Russia spent more than a decade modernizing its military. It is becoming increasingly de-modernized with every day of fighting in Ukraine. Destroyed T-80 and T-90 tanks — the most modern in Moscow’s inventory — are being replaced by T-62s that were obsolete 50 years ago. Soldiers in their 20s, casualties of war, are being replaced by ill-trained “mobiks” in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s.

It will take far longer than a decade to replace what Putin has wasted.

The way this war has squandered Russian resources, finances, and demographics has serious geopolitical implications. For a few tens of billions of dollars — admittedly, some of them squandered — our Number Two geopolitical rival has had the heart cut out of its conventional military forces, all without spilling the blood of a single American soldier.

What we’re witnessing is, in short, the least expensive generational kneecapping of a geopolitical rival in world history.

For Biden:

But the hardest fact of all is this: The Russo-Ukraine War was completely unnecessary, a waste of lives and resources practically made inevitable by Presidentish Joe Biden’s wobbly-kneed uncertainty in the weeks before February 23 as Putin maneuvered his forces into position.