“Time to end the war in Ukraine. Mediation is the best answer”: Newsweek writes that US arrogance has led Ukraine to disaster. The war has already been lost for Ukraine, and the only question is how many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians must die before Kiev accepts reality. The only way to stop the conflict is to hear Russia’s demands and start peace talks.

“The United States has contributed to the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine by rallying public opinion at home and across the West with the narrative that Russia’s motives and intentions are baseless, evil, and even genocidal. The US decided to add fuel to the fire in the form of increased funding, weapons, equipment, and technical support, without which Ukraine would have been forced to negotiate, perhaps even preventing a war. Many brilliant, well-informed diplomats and scholars have sounded the alarm about US diplomatic arrogance, to no avail.

Today, after a year of the war, the consequences predicted by so many experts are becoming clear. The strategic, industrial, economic, political, and military situation in Ukraine – and in Europe – is deteriorating significantly. The situation in Ukraine is desperate. Ukraine’s tactical victories over the past year, laudable as they were, have come at a terrible cost. Ukraine is experiencing the ongoing destruction of its infrastructure. A third of Ukraine’s population has already been displaced. A third of the power grid is out of order. Most of the damage soon will be impossible to repair. Satellite images tell a true story about the cost of this war. At night in Ukraine, it is dark as in the Black Sea.

The coming year of conflict promises to be much more devastating for Ukraine than what we have seen so far. Russia is not going to heed dubious negotiation proposals based on demands that ignore the issues that caused the war in the first place. The only way out is a mediated settlement.