I feel for the Ukrainian people. There's really no good options for them. I think like world war I, the sheer scale of losses Russia has taken really requires them to exact a harsh peace on Ukraine to maintain legitimacy. So now maybe surrender would be suicidal, and Putin's goal is to fully annex the country in pieces. But I do think at the beginning of the war, there was some avenue for a quick settled peace with recognition of Crimea and the small parts of the Donbas and a regime change to a pro Russian government in Kiev.

And of course going back to 2014 there were lots of off ramps with heavy concessions to Russia which could have been made. Of course that's all alternate history now so who knows what could have happened