Pull back? What about Crimea—should he leave that to Ukraine? How will the Ukraine victors treat the Russian people who live there? Not very well I should think. There will be reprisals. If Russia does pull back, it will end Russia as a power and lead to further instability. Want those nukes to fall into the wrong hands? The answers are not simple.
“How will the Ukraine victors treat the Russian people who live there?”
You know, if Russia was actually concerned about the plight of “Russian people” living outside their borders, they could simply offer refugee status to any of them who want to come back to Russia. But Putin will never do that, because they might accept the offer, and then Putin would no longer have a ready-made excuse to invade all of his neighbors.
No, Putin wants those “Russian people” to stay outside of Russia, just like the Arabs want the Palestinian Arabs to remain a people without a state, so they will always have a ready-made excuse to attack Israel. SSDD.