Oh I don't know, EU leadership and officials were more than happy to settle with with a dictator who annexed foreign land, crushed dissent and assassinated political rivals both domestically and on foreign soil. They were happy to sell him weapons. Hell they invited the bastard to dance on their weddings.

It really is a good question why has the world leaders have settled with a person like that in charge of a nuclear power. I wonder if cheap energy had something to do with that.

The better example is that Russia was robbing a bank and now has hostages (I think I've seen many movies about it). Why negotiate even though they're wrong? Because they can shoot a hostage (nuke something).

Their nukes don't mean that you let them do whatever they want. But it means that you have to take limited actions that keep the warfare conventional. And sometimes that means settling with them.

Heck, finding something that Putin can claim is a victory is probably important if you want the war to end. It doesn't matter if it's real, and it may not matter if he thinks it's something he won. It certainly matters that he can tell the Russian people that the cost they bore to "denazify" Ukraine worked. Otherwise, he failed and that way lies bad consequences for dictators.