What if Ukraine agrees to deal which lets Russia save face?

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I frankly don't think that publicly protesting is what disident russians should be doing, especially with how few there are standing up. 15 years of hard labor in siberia or getting conscripted into the russian military for just a few minutes of peaceful protest... It is good that some of them are speaking out, but I think they would be far better off keeping a low profile while engaging in partisan type activities.

Poles did protest in 1980s.
Ukrainians did protest in 2014.
Belarussians did protest in 2020.
Iranians are protesting now.

Do they want to build a better country for themselves or not? Or is the only problem the fact they are losing and as long as it were Ukrainians and Buryats dying, they didn't care?

Yeah, unfortunately much of what little protesting there is in russia seems to be mostly over the recent move to mobilize the military rather than out of moral objection or whatever. I'm not saying there aren't those protesting for moral reasons, there are at least some; especially those where were protesting months ago at the start of the war, but they are likely mostly imprisoned or conscripted already. There at least was a guy (he may still be doing it, I don't know) who was protesting alone every day in his city by just walking around with a sign in russian saying "нет война" or in english "no war". With the russian word for war being partly censored, literally written as "нет **йна", so as not to be arrested. He frequently got beaten up by individuals and groups of russians with no one bothering to help, especially not the cops. There are videos of him on youtube.

If Ukraine lets Russia "save face," it would be equivalent to allowing Hitler to "save face" via the Munich Pact of 1938.

But haven’t most wars in human history ended somewhere in the middle? As illogical as this might seem.

Most wars, yes.
But total invasions are rarely like this. Either a nation gets practically wiped out or manages to defend themselves... or the war goes on, sometimes in waves, for very long time.

This particular war started 8 years ago. Unless one side definitively wins it, it will continue, with quieter and more intense periods. And if Russia definitively wins it, it will take a break to recharge and continue further West. Which, from my point of view, cannot be allowed.

https://coldwar.unc.edu/theme/cuban-missile-crisis/

Yes, Khrushchev wanted a “nuclear fist” in Cuba and thereby making a big jump in catching up in the arms race. However, what we as Americans don’t look at very often is that by having nukes in West Germany and in Turkey, we were pretty close to Moscow.

Steven Culp on the left played Bobby Kennedy who negotiated the final deal with the Soviet ambassador.

The movie implies without saying that some people in the U.S. national security establishment believed a nuclear showdown with the Soviets was inevitable, and thus we should do it sooner rather than later while we still have the advantage. And this makes logical sense, if we accept that premise.

But it wasn’t the case that a nuclear showdown was inevitable between the United States and Soviet Union.

The only connection between Cuban Crisis and current situation I can see is fear of nuclear SHTF.
Otherwise, the two are totally different stories.

Yes, it was a bad deal. And therefore, for the 80+ years since and perhaps for the next 100 years, I suppose we must feel (?) duty-bound or similar to view any last-minute deal stopping a war with the highest suspicion. Obviously, I don’t think it has to be this way.

And if we really want to talk about British and French inaction, I think we ought to talk about when the Nazis re-armed the Rhineland on March 7, 1936.

This may have been the crucial turning point. And at this point, the Nazis had already been in power for about three years. But of course England and France didn’t want another terrible war so soon after the 1st World War [which at that point, was less than a 20-year generation previously].

However, I think the reason that even history textbooks focus on Munich in 1938 is that it has a juicy personality people can latch onto. Neville Chamberlain can be viewed as a fool, a simpleton, and most of all, as weak. I mean, even his first name is vaguely feminine! [although history books don’t focus on that part]

I understand, on some level, why Chamberlain appeased Hitler. And the decision, at the time, was a rather popular one.

If he had a name like "Charles Chamberlain," I would feel the same way. I don't think of "Neville" as being effeminate. It's more like I think of it as "posh" much more than "effeminate."

Like you said, they didn't want another World War.

But, especially in retrospect, it was a grave error.

If Ukraine gives in, it would be "history repeating itself." Putin is an expansionist who wants to revert back to "past glories." And this includes subjugation of non-Russians (and subjugations of Russians, too). Sort of reminds me of Hitler in many ways.

He might well even have ambitions of copying the soviet creation of kaliningrad, but on a potentially much larger scale.