The war would be over tomorrow if Ukraine simply stayed neutral.
That's probably Trump's plan. But the deep state says no, let's escalate instead and gamble on Russia backing down for a few decades.. So he'll have to carefully define neutrality to create a demilitarized zone with some autonomy.
Wrong.
You all are looking at this in far too shallow a manner.
NATO is only a threat to Moscow in that NATO gets in the way of Russian expansionism and Moscow’s response to the real threats to Russia that can damage it.
First and most important is the cultural threat. The under 40’s in particular, in Ukraine, have been swinging more and more pro-West. The cultural side of that is very dangerous to Russia, or should I say WAS very dangerous to Russia, because of the formerly many close ties between the two countries. Unless rejected violently (see: radical Islam), Western culture, both its good and bad points, can be very -— invasive. Certainly the usual Russian leadership tradition, centuries old, cannot survive in a heavily “Westernized” culture.
Second is resource control. Russia does not need Ukraine’s mineral, petroleum, and other natural resources. But, for example, cheap Ukrainian petroleum products over the next 20 years or so could be extremely difficult competition for Russia. Russia would do almost anything to keep those resources off the market and / or control them.