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The hard part is to convince Russia that the NEXT US president will not tear up any agreement between the US and Russia. I think outlawing the Democrat Party would go a long way to relieving Russia of that concern (after all, Europe has no problem outlawing troublemakers), but it would still be a big step here.

So the next option would be pulling back and/or removing US forces from Europe, as that would give Russia some time to prepare, should a psycho, like Nuland get into a position to start moving troops back into Europe to start another war against Russia.

As far as Europe itself goes, Russia, like anyone else, can read the tea leaves there, and while Europeans can threaten all they want today, in a decade those countries will be mostly Islamic and thus won’t have the psychological baggage regarding Russia that Europeans have.

Moments ago when the news came out that the European leaders were to join Trump and Zelinski in Washington, I published a reply that concluded:

Everything in this visit turns on whether Trump will extend guarantees to Ukraine for a deal that Trump himself has hatched with Putin,

( https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4335053/posts?page=43#43 )

This news, coming out minutes later to the effect that the US will supply "NATO -like" guarantees of the security of Ukraine, means that the deal is very likely to go through. Ukraine will have no practical option but to accept the deal, including loss of territory, because the sovereignty of the nation will be preserved, even if in rump form.

Donald Trump deserves praise for allegedly extending this guarantee that makes peace possible, subject to the observation that this is the guarantee that Zelinski sought in the fateful White House fiasco in which Trump humiliated Zelinski for demanding such a guarantee. Now Trump, if the report is to be believed, is willing to turn about-face and offer the guarantee some months later that might have ended this war then.

One further rather snarky observation is warranted: Trump will now have to reeducate the amen chorus to accept what they had all been conditioned to reject before, an American guarantee.