The cold will also make military advances more difficult, locking down the front lines at least until the spring.
https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/
Always check even when posted by a veracious source, especially if it seems unlikely.
Is there diplomatic capital and resources available to bring this war to some sort of conclusion? There is still considerable support in Europe for Ukraine.
Can Ukraine get a EU but not NATO deal and the restoration of the non-Donbas regions of Ukraine? That would be a success for Ukraine. If Russia can secure the irredentist portion of Donbas and remove Crimea (with a water corridor) from discussion with a neutrality contract for Ukraine modeled on late Cold War agreements then that would be a win for them.
There also has to be an agreement on the hydrocarbon reserves in the region - I think the Russians want the Ukrainians dependent on them for energy and I think that there are Ukrainian oligarchs who aspire to become hydrocarbon aristocrats and are so blocking any peace deal until they can secure this.
I think a neutrality agreement was why Trump met Putin in Helsinki but he was a noob at the time and had a Vienna Summit episode that made for poor optics. The Neocons were still in ascendance and the credibility of the media hadn't been unwound yet. Let's hope it doesn't turn out like Libya - a mess that was bungled and then ignored.
I've been on the Ukrainian side when it came to membership of the EU since year dot. The war has taken too many lives and wreaked too much destruction for it to rationally continue. The question is not whether it's time to bring it to a conclusion but whether there is the talent to do this - the responsible parties are evading this question by pouring more money into it and refusing to contemplate satisfactory terms.
It's all looking increasingly macabre. Watching the attempts by Russian armour to break through Ukrainian lines is reminiscent of WWI. It was the same for earlier attempts by Ukrainian armour on the Russian defensive lines.
The following goes for both sides.