Why There Can't Be A Negotiated End To Puty's War

There are two obvious, really large reasons.

If I thought about it for a minute or two, I could come up with others.

But the big two are showstoppers.

Reason One: Only an idiot would attack another country, grind that country into rubble and dust, killing many of that country's people and then stop one day and give back the land that that idiot had illegally annexed and go home. 

Since Putin - many unseemly things though he be - is not an idiot, we have a showstopper, before the show has started. 

If Putin were an idiot and tried the gambit, the truth of it "I went in, lost thousands of tanks, lost a couple hundred thousand men, pretty much destroyed the ruble, ran the national supply of ammunition to zero and came home without spoils" is a hard sell to the home folk, even a home folk as cowed as the Russian people. 

Since truth has a nasty fungibility these days, the cowed Russian people are bound to have heard all or part of that tale.  

And they are living in it, so they can see it if they look around at all. 

So, again, we have a showstopper. 

Since Zelinsky won't take less than all of his country back, and, unless the world is really OK with authorizing big power land grabs as a 21st Century protocol, we have a total impasse before one word of peace talks has been conceived: so, showstopper.

Reason Two: Even if Reason One didn't exist, only an idiot would let a criminal aggression occur on his land, resulting in a couple hundred thousand troops rampaging over his country hither and yon, thousands of tanks rampaging up and down the nation's highways and byways wreaking fire and death, havoc and destruction in an irrationally random and sinister surfeit, millions of artillery shells, missiles and autonomous destructive flying devices raining down randomly upon the nation's churches, synagogues, mosques, markets, hospitals, maternity centers, farms, houses, apartments, parks, granaries, warehouses, rail stations and whatever I have forgotten to include on this sorry list, and then say "please Mr. Rampager and Killer and Destroyer, just go home, keep your new land and live long and prosper".

 Zelinsky is not an idiot; one hopes that neither is the rest of the world: so, showstopper.

I said I could think of only two reasons for the show being stopped.

In process of outlining them a third becomes so obvious as to be laughable.

Reason Three: Somebody is going to have to pay for all the death and destruction and there are two bills to pay.

Bill one is the unknown tally of billions of dollars that are going to be needed to re-build everything.

The Marshall Plan cost $13.3 billion - that's $173 billion today.

Let's just say that rebuilding Ukraine might cost what the amount of money that the US contributed to the stabilization and rebuilding of Europe was back in 1948.

So, the world's nations are all going to chip in and provide $173 billion to rebuild Ukraine and let Puty go home and lie about his great war of reclamation?

Probably a showstopper.

(Even if Puty said he would pay, the price tag is over 12% of Russia's GDP: probably a showstopper.)

Bill two is the limitless number of crimes committed by Puty..

So, the world's nations are all going invite Puty to the General Assembly in New York so he can receive total exoneration from massive crimes of war?

They are going to exempt him from paying for them?

That sounds more likely than anything else I have said, but it's probably still a showstopper.