Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory. Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground. Macron famously said that he would "have to send guys to Odesa" and yet 3 years later there are still no French troops in Ukraine and Russia has since captured even more territory and is actively bombarding Kyiv. Europe simply cannot keep carving out $100 billion military aid packages every year indefinitely.

Tough decisions have to be made and, despite public criticism and posture, every EU leader is secretly hoping USA can broker a peace deal and this all just kind of goes away.

Maybe. But another possibility is a repeat of what happened in 1918 with the Russian central government falling to a violent revolution followed what was essentially a surrender in WWI. That's not necessarily the most likely outcome — but one can hope.

> Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory.

Why would Europe decide anything? Ukraine is a sovereign country, nobody should be making decisions on its behalf!

Especially not about war and its teritory!

Edit: EU countries should give Ukraine part of their territories, to compensate for land stolen by Russia! This way Ukraine becomes part of NATO and EU, everybody wins!

Europe doesn’t decide when to end the war, or if it does, Europe has decide the war does not end. There is only one party that decides when the war ends. That would be Russia.

Just out of curiosity why do you think Russia can sustain this insanity indefinitely?

A few countries think they are in the "to invade" list of Putin. They prefer to pay to fight that war on Ukranian land with Ukranian troops.

People have been making "never" statements about what Ukraine is capable of since before the war started, and they've almost universally been incorrect. You're also paying a lot of attention to the minutiae of Ukraine's pressure and ignoring what's going on in Russia politically, economically, and in terms of burning infrastructure.

As for this "going away" like it or not that doesn't work and it isn't going to happen no matter how much people would like to wish it away. Russia taking a break to re-arm and recover isn't the same as "it's over" and frankly that's why Ukraine is stuck fighting the way they are.

You're also missing the value that Western nations get from Ukraine fighting Russia, both in terms of disrupting Russia, and advancing the state of the art of drone warfare, EW, etc without the rest of us having to fight and die for it. The amount of money involved when considered against those factors and the economic reality of an EU-integrated Ukraine makes this entirely sustainable economically.

> Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground.

This is such a defeatist attitude. By that logic North Vietnam would never have recovered South Vietnam.

A lot of things can happen if you just refuse to be defeated. Hannibal killed almost the entire Roman army at Cannae, but the war ended 15 years later with full victory by the Romans.

In 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe fighting Germany. Many had fallen, were neutral or were fighting with the Nazis (Russia, Italy, etc). But in the end Britain won.