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From day one, trust has never been possible.

The only way this can work is a pro-Russia government in Kiev. But that government must be made up of Ukraine citizens, and my thinking has been that the way that happens is with senior military officers, who attended University and military schools in Russia. They are the best people to make up such a government. They likely retained friendships of decades with senior Russian military. They are the only people who the Russians could trust.

Such a government could be purely technocratic and expected only to keep the trans running on time and the lights turned on. No political positions on anything. All Western espionage services executed. No problem with guerilla warfare because they are Ukraine citizens.

The Russians might trust them because their own senior military would be urging them to do so.

A few years of the trains running on time and the lights staying on and Gazprom keeping them warm in winter and a few refugees may start to trickle back home.

There is entirely too much talk about the destruction of Ukraine, or sometimes it is phrased as wiping out Ukraine or maybe even the death of Ukraine. Ukraine is mostly dirt. You plant seeds in it and things grow. No, that is not metaphor.
That is literal and isn’t going to change as long as the soil is not irradiated. The only thing really at risk is maybe a hundred people running things. Replacing them is small potatoes in the context of multi-millenia history of mankind.

Good guys or bad guys don’t really stand the test of time. The Mongol hordes with their vast empire were never good guys. Ruthless and brutal. History doesn’t care. History draws lines on a map as to how far they extended Westward until super duper emperor back home died and that civilization’s customs required all faction leaders to return to vote and choose a new one. Being bad guys did not stop their expansion. Happenstance stopped their expansion.