Something that I mentioned to a Ukrainian colleague who asked for my take as someone who is coming from Cyprus is also the effect of time on a conflict.

A politician can make passionate speeches about how faits accomplis will never be accepted and that justice cannot be anything other but the return to the previous condition and so on, but at the end of the day most Greek Cypriots understand that almost a century later, you cannot start kicking people out of the houses they lived for three generations without becoming the bad guy, even if the grandfather stole that house in the aftermath of an illegal war. You can’t punish the grandchild for the sins of the grandfather, you need to find a way to work with them.

So, for Ukraine, the moral of the story is that if it becomes a frozen conflict, every next attempt to settle it will require more compromises on humanitarian grounds. And so far, I think they get it, since they do not consider a ceasefire. But if they end up having to agree to a ceasefire, they should be very suspicious of politicians who tell them at there’s no need to rush to pursue a settlement because “in the future we can negotiate something better”. With every passing decade, fewer and fewer aspects will be up for negotiation at all.