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The evidence is that, over the last few years, the US in particular has talked up Russia as the big enemy and military threat, blamed (without much evidence) for interfering in the 2016 election and the Brexit referendum.
Putin is not going to withdraw to 2014. He is keeping Crimea and he needs something else - by which I don't mean territory - to make an orderly withdrawal. If he doesn't get something, he won't leave.
frank9755-
I agree that the US has been inching towards a harder line on Russia since 2016 but the evidence that they interfered in the 2016 election is voluminous, read the Mueller Report, or the GOP led, bi-partisan Senate Intelligence committee report from 2020.
Implying that 'we' the west need to get to negotiations with Russia and find an acceptable solution denies Ukraine's agency, which is what Putin has wanted all along.
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(without much evidence) for interfering in the 2016 election
Here's a chart showing the number of confirmed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian assets over a 7 month period. There were also confirmed cyber attacks originating from Russia.
Jung
Stonehedge
Is there any evidence for this? The west has been extremely comfortable with Putin's Russia for the last couple of decades. Reliance on Russian energy in Europe, gobs of oligarch cash juicing local property markets, political parties etc. Do you really think western governments want the second largest nuclear power, led by a questionably adjusted autocrat bogged down in a bloody war on Europe's doorstep? I'd bet every one of them would take a quick Russian withdrawal to 2014 lines and a staged reversal of sanctions in a hot minute. Betting on regime change happening organically in Russia is a pretty out of the money option, especially without the sort of turbulence that would deleteriously affect western European interests in the short term.