Where do you think it will end @Rich?
Iād assume Russia could end up with a generous buffer zone around the Donetsk Basin in the south and east, Kharkov in North East, Odessa south west. That could be a number of weeks away yet.
For the US I imagine they see Ukraine as just another step, since the end of WW2, on their way towards global hegemony. This (so far) minor fracas with Russia is probably a bit of a shock to them but nowhere near enough to stop them from continuing with their quest. Any deal between Russia and the Ukraine is likely to break or be temporary. It will be interesting to see what Russia does next and how far it will advance in the Ukraine. I canāt see āitā really ending unless the US gives up this global hegemony crap, comes to itās senses and starts meaningful talks with Russia, China and the rest of the world about disarmament, trade deals and peace on earth. Obviously the chances of anything like this happening at the moment are zero. Or āitā could end with the collapse of the USD and/or the break up of the US. Or massive economic collapse all over the place with vast numbers of people being wrecked by the jabs. And thereās always the possibility of the US losing it completely and starting something nuclear. Iām buggered if I know really Karen. There doesnāt seem to be much light about does there but itās good to see the people in the Donbass and other areas in Ukraine being liberated after 8 years of hell.
My guess is that what will ease the tense condition of the world at the moment will be the US itself going through the same sort of transformation as Russia went through in the '90s - only worse.
By the time that that collapse is well forward - as we can see it shaping up right now - it would be no surprise to see supervisory expeditionary forces from Russia, China and a coalition of other states, entering the continental US to secure the loose nuclear weapons and make them safe; whatās left of the native authorities of the US by then being in such a non-functional shambles that they canāt do such safe-guarding for themselves; but neither can they prevent the real powers in the world - by then - doing it for them.
And of course, by the time things get to that pass, you can expect the overseas empire of bases of the Anglozionist empire to be pretty well shattered into a series of isolated, dilapidated semi-ruins, no longer securely connected to, and supplied by, their metropolitan state, where ragged, bearded speakers of US-English, the collapsed and stranded remnants of the imperial army, dream and scheme, and get increasingly hopeless about somehow managing to get back home to the US, before they die in exile, of despair, or at the hands of vengeful native communities. (Imagine what the Okinawans, for example, will do to their USAmerican occupiers, once theyāve seized back the upper hand locally, and knowing that the US base has no help coming from anywhere.)
Iāve been expecting the US to follow the same dissolution pattern that engulfed the USSR, since first coming across Dmitry Orlovās famous essays comparing the condition of the two states, and pointing to all the signs of the US following the same trajectory shortly - in historical terms - after the USSR.
That, I think, is what weāre watching right now. It has nothing to do with the politico-economic system favoured by the transforming state; itās simply to do with physics and the diminishing availability of vital commodities such as cheap, abundant fossil hydrocarbon energy and easily mined and refined metals, etc., and the absolutely-consequent, Tainteresque āCollapse Of Complex Societiesā which follows inevitably from such geo-physical forces majeures - which we donāt now have under secure human control, and never will have.