KYIV

“PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY’S REMARKS, about seeking to end his country’s war with Russia next year by diplomatic means, says it all. The West has all but lost interest, despite the tough talk. Various countries want to force Ukrainian refugees to go home. And, of course, Trump wants the fighting to stop. Soldiers in the front line are joking that all that remains to be decided is how white the flag needs to be.”

Colonel Sherman Panzerfaust, an expert in nuclear age conflict, who runs a private military company from a private island in the Caribbean, says the end, while predictable, might be more difficult to achieve than people imagine.

“Wars are much harder to end than they are to start,” he says. “First, there’s the Russians. You have to get them to stop fighting. Then there’s the Ukrainians – there’ll be shit loads of them who won’t wanna give up no matter what. And if left to their own devices, who knows what they might do? It’s not a comforting prospect. Putin only has a portion of Ukraine; Ukraine has lost a lump of its territory. Even if peace breaks out, how long will it last? See, once you start a thing like this, it takes on a life of its own. What if some Ukrainians explode a small nuke inside Russia? What if they send a long range missile into Moscow and cause terrible damage? This war has become one where the tail wags the dog. NATO can retreat, but that doesn’t solve matters. It just slows things down. And makes the West look so damn weak – how many fights have we run away from since Saigon? And I was there for that.”