Five ways the war in Ukraine could end | View

“Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please,” Machiavelli observed in his book on Florence’s history.

He was referring to a war started by a Papal legate, which quickly went south when the attacker’s army of (mostly) mercenaries was bribed into standing aside. The attacker found himself in a war he thought he had begun on his own terms, but was now fighting at a disadvantage – and yet still had to fight.

This observation still holds true. Russia began a war thinking it would quickly win, only to find that carefully drafted plans are often – as another piece of wisdom states – the first casualties of war.

It is a perilous exercise to plan a large-scale war and a similarly risky one to try and predict how such transformative events conclude. Still, as we’re well into the third month of the conflict, some potential scenarios as to how the war in Ukraine could end are starting to emerge, and some are growing more likely than others.

Let’s start with the obvious: Much like the attack against Florence, Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going as planned. Russia sought a fast and decisive victory in Ukraine, expecting to be able to land a decapitating blow on the Ukrainian leadership.

This did not happen. Moscow was effectively leaping into the unknown by the time the Russian army got stuck into one of the most catastrophic traffic jams in history, on their way to Kyiv. By the time Russian troops withdrew, at the beginning of April, the initial concept of a “Russian victory”, which likely involved the creation of a new puppet regime in Kyiv, and the capture of large parts of Ukraine, was gone and so were thousands of Russian soldiers.

This is bound to have an impact on the trajectory of the war. On February 24, Russia