Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Reading from short to long-term, the priorities must be:

1. Help Ukraine defeat Russia militarily
2. Weaken Russia via crippling sanctions
3. Achieve a lasting, just peace for Ukraine with security guarantees
4. Massive reconstruction aid to Ukraine
5. Accelerate Ukrainian EU accession AND
6. A poor, resentful nuclear-armed Russia is in nobody's long-term interest. Somehow, we have to bring them in from the cold...how you achieve this would be a feat of statecraft that will take years and decades to pull off.

Putins daily briefing:

Yes, I’d be pretty confident that Germany and other EU countries will be buying vast amounts of gas from Russia down the line.

Putin is old and maybe sick. He is toxic now to deal with so countries might wait for the next guy which might not take too long. It will take much much longer than 15 years to build the Russian military up again, it has been essentially destroyed as a threat to the west (bar nukes).

In Russias weakened state there may be a chance to get cheap gas for a few decades to allow transition to green energy.

Russians opinions on the war https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1524275166045384704?s=20&t=Hh-lHe5nFGkWbHNzsKhZFA

Very doubtful, as we've seen energy dependence on Putin's Russia is a no-go. Gas is infrastructure heavy, once the change is done it's unlikely that countries will revert. I suspect Putin will be around a long time, the only thing that would force him to go would likely be health issues, if that occurs he'll choose a successor who will be very much in line with his thinking.

You think Russia was 'isolated' during Communism? Interesting, although completely wrong.

Righteous anger may feel good, but it's not a strategy. All your posts are polemical with very little reasoning behind them. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully onboard with 'winning the war' but you also have to win the peace. Otherwise you go back to war again. That's why we have the EU, the UN etc.

Russia will be engaged with again, hopefully in a way that helps lead them away from this self-destructive path they are on and towards the democratic norms that we enjoy.

You should have a read of what Fiona Hill (probably the world's leading expert on Putin's thinking) is saying on this topic before issuing such categorical opinions. And indeed the DNI yesterday in her testimony to Congress.

I don't really think that either of us will change the other's mind but I'll leave you with two thoughts from history if your absolutist approach had been adopted by the statesmen of their times:

1. Nixon would never have gone to China
2. Germany would not exist in its current form

You have to win the peace - and that's a much harder and subtle process than winning a war.

As far as he's concerned, if you're not integrated with the West, you're isolated. It's a bit of a 'fog in the channel, continent cut off'-type point of view.