Better a bad peace

Vladimir Putin's victories are few and miserable.

With the cannon and the horror.

Thanks to its endless arsenal of howitzers and soldiers.

Recruited by deception, miserable soldier and right to plunder.

He doesn't even serve the propaganda.

The young people flee in terror from the forced levies.

No one feels that Russian homeland or wants to sacrifice themselves for such a stale and savage imperial idea.

This is how he is conquering Donbas, a mirror of his idea of ​​Ukraine: burned land but Russian, better than live but Ukraine.

A pyrrhic victory that does not make up for his humiliating defeat, the frustrated assault on kyiv to decapitate the legitimate government.

There is a tie on the battlefield, but in the political contest his defeat is overwhelming.

He has already achieved the opposite of what he was looking for: the Ukrainian nation is growing;

NATO opens its doors to two new partners, neighbors of Russia, and Brussels is preparing to recognize kyiv as a candidate for EU membership.

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And yet, the balance has not yet tipped.

Russian advances are slow and costly.

It will be difficult for them to go beyond Donetsk and Lugansk.

A Ukrainian counter-offensive is also unlikely, despite its admirable defensive capabilities.

To go on the attack and reconquer the lost cities and territory, he would need allies even more willing to supply arms.

Putin cannot win.

Even if he settles for Crimea and Donbas, for Ukraine it is an existential question and for Europe of hegemony.

Or, if you like, to submit to the Russian veto right to the political and military integration of the continent.

No one can submit to these demands or recognize such displacement by force across borders and then accept the guarantees that someone who has so flagrantly violated the law can offer.

It would be a precedent that would encourage Beijing to repeat the play with Taiwan.

Victory is the only serious guarantee.

The problem lies in its definition and in determining who should carry it out.

These are not the current times to admit a peace without compensation or punishment for those responsible for aggression, war crimes and perhaps genocide.

The benevolent and appeasing ideas belong to another era, before Russia fell into Putinist involution two decades ago.

At the same time, it is difficult to reasonably expect the absolute defeat of Putin, his total withdrawal from Ukraine and an effective international surveillance regime so that he never returns to his old ways.

There will be a time, hopefully sooner rather than later, when the phrase that Jacobo García collected in his chronicle from the back of a bus in Krematorsk will make perfect sense: "Better a bad peace than a good war."

With the energy tap and the grain harvest embargo, Putin wants the allies to make Volodymyr Zelensky see reason, but the responsibility and the right to make such a decision corresponds solely and entirely to the kyiv government.

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