I feel like a protracted proxy war in Ukraine was never really on the table.

What we've seen so far is the US and its allies forcing Russia to pay a "price" for its adventurism. The value of this is both to act as a deterrent against future actions and to strengthen Ukraine's negotiating power when it ultimately surrenders.

I suspect that at a certain point everybody will be satisfied with the level of pain exacted, Ukraine surrenders, and Russia ends up with at least a large chunk of Ukraine.

Don't judge people by yourself Ukraine will not surrender.

Europeans will force it to, unfortunately.

Russians already tried to force something, will not work. No Ukrainian president will ever sign because he/she will be overthrown the next day.

Yes Ukrainian people is the bastion and are fighting bravely.

Feels like Europeans (namely Germany and France) will provide as little weapons as possible to exhaust Ukrainians so they get tired and surrender themselves.

Once Ukrainian public is ready, Biden will pressure Zelinsky. Biden has already said “we told him but he didn’t want to listen” hinting that he can throw Zelinsky under the bus if he doesn’t behave.

Surrender (“peace”) would be an awful option for Ukraine because Putin will regroup and in a couple of years launch a new assault on the remaining part of the country.

There won’t be mercy from him, judging by executions on occupied territory.

Poland will continue cooperating with America (who give most of the aid). The current government is anti-Russia and even if they lose elections, the only pro-Russia people are authoritarian right wing nutjobs who probably won't even win a single seat.

Yes Polish people have shown a lot of resilience and deserve great respect in this situation. Batlic states as well of course. Hope they won’t allow Germany sweep Ukraine under the rug.

It might be like this. It's already tremendous impressive how the Ukrainian people stood up to Putin.

But bombing so many civilians means after a while a tremendous loss as well.

It's just speculation and the hope would of course be Putin just getting out of Ukraine but Putin just has much less to loose besides his own death.

Not a critically high price anyway. Gas prices cover everything and complicit German politicians don’t consider stopping paying. Looks like Putin’s gamble played well once again, he knows his European counterparts well.

I also assume that they will have to surrender but the price will be much much higher than Putin though.

This will not motivate Putin to push forward.