Can Ukraine drive out 200,000 Russian troops?

General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned, not for the first time, that it will be a long war in Ukraine. He doesn't spell out how long but I imagine he is thinking in terms of years. Three, four, five years? The prospect of a long, drawn-out war would be disastrous. But the pessimistic view is not surprising. As Milley says, there are still at least 200,000 Russian troops in Ukraine. That is a huge force, even if many of them are conscripts with low morale and motivation. How will it be possible to get rid of them all back across the border into Russia without a decision by Putin to call off the whole "special operation"? Putin is never going to do that because it would be humiliating. So the 200,000 troops will stay put. However many breakthroughs there might be by the Ukrainian troops, and there haven't been many so far, they will never be enough to get Putin to surrender. So Milley has to be right. It's going to be a protracted war. How damaging is that going to be for Ukraine and for the 50-nation coalition supporting the Kyiv government? An endless war with no solution in sight for years is what this planet doesn't need when climate-change is threatening to make the world's population suffer. The only answer has to be a deal which will not satisfy anyone but it will at least bring the slaughter and destruction to a halt.