Why Vladimir Putin is as close as he's been to getting what he wants out of Ukraine

It started with a series of unexpected comments from Donald Trump’s new Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Before negotiations over how Russia’s war in Ukraine might end had even begun, he publicly announced the United States saw the prospect of the country returning to its pre-2014, internationally recognised borders as “unrealistic”. And while sitting in NATO headquarters he also said his nation did not view membership for Ukraine as a “realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”. What this did was effectively tell Russia it won’t have to negotiate over Crimea, which it took from Ukraine in 2014, and that its…