Note: this article is AI-generated.

President Putin shocked friends and foes alike, most of whom were hitherto convinced that Russia wants to capture all of Ukraine, by sharing a ceasefire proposal on Friday during his speech at the Foreign Ministry. The terms are simple: Ukraine must withdraw from the administrative borders of those four regions that joined Russia after September 2022’s referenda and declare that it no longer wants to join NATO. Upon doing so, “we will immediately cease fire and start negotiations”, he promised.

Russia is producing artillery shells around three times faster than Ukraine's Western allies and for about a quarter of the cost, according to an analysis shared with Sky News.

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“spheres of economic influence” are the most likely outcome if France’s talk of a conventional NATO intervention is implemented, after which the participants would be able to profit from their respective zones while carrying out military training and law enforcement activities there. These foreign troops could also prevent the state’s collapse in the areas under their control, repel uncontrollable refugee influxes, and combat weapons smuggling into the EU.

The end effect would be to formally preserve Ukrainian statehood per the West’s officially stated objective that “justifies” their proxy war against Russia through that former Soviet Republic while nevertheless asymmetrically partitioning it into “spheres of economic influence” per the Davos agenda. It’s also possible that with time some of Ukraine’s western neighbors like Poland might consider entering into a “confederation’ with the adjacent region under their control but that’s still a far-fetched scenario.

Their taxpayers could be stuck with the bill for reconstructing those formerly Ukrainian regions, plus the locals would become citizens with equal rights (including voting ones), which those countries’ people might firmly oppose and therefore potentially rebel against. It’s much less economically and politically costly to simply siphon wealth from those regions in exchange for limited security support than to constitutionally enshrine enduring economic, political, and security rights to their locals for prestige.
On cost, it said the average production cost per 155 mm shell - the type produced by NATO countries - was about $4,000 (£3,160) per unit, though it varied significantly between countries. This is compared with a reported Russian production cost of around $1,000 (£790) per 152 mm shell that the Russian armed forces use.