Does Putin really want a for-ever war?

Putin cannot win his war in Ukraine, he can only prolong it. And that's what he is doing. The war is part of his long-term strategy to wear down the West and eventually to emerge alongside the president of China as the two dominant leaders of the world for the foreseeable future. What are the options for the West? Stay in the fight for ever? Push for a doubtful peace? Call the whole thing off and leave Ukraine to a grim future? Or accept Ukraine as a Nato member and confront Russia with all the might of a full-scale conventional war? Do any of these options raise hopes of an honourable settlement? I fear not. So if Putin has already decided to regard the war in Ukraine as a permanent feature in his diary, the West's choices are minimal. Stick it out to the end is the most favoured choice, but what will the end look like? No one knows. Not Putin, not Biden, and probably not the next president of the United States if it's not Biden. At some point in the next 12 months, we are going to have to call Putin's bluff. It would be dangerous. But the fact is, the war IS damaging the Russian economy, inflation is rising steeply and in terms of his original objectives very little has been achieved on the battlefield. It's time perhaps to start getting really tough with Putin. A for-ever war and all the atrocities that go along with it just cannot be permitted. Putin has many weaknesses, it's time the West exploited them to the full.