October 27, 2025: Four months from now the Ukraine War will be four years old. Russia, Ukraine and the NATO supporters of suppliers of the Ukrainian war effort are also eager to see an end to the fighting. In the last year, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has expressed growing interest in finding a way to end the war. The primary obstacle to peace is Russian occupied Ukrainian territory.

Russia began seizing Ukrainian territory in 2014. When the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, they already held 11.5 percent of Ukraine. Currently Russia occupies about 19 percent of Ukraine but the Ukrainian forces are reducing that. Russian personnel and economic losses have made it difficult for the Russians to resist Ukrainian counteroffensives. Another reason for the Russians to make a deal is to rescue Russian espionage efforts in Europe. Two years ago a Russian espionage effort in Britain ran afoul of local incompetence and mixed signals from the Russian FSB intelligence agency. It all began after the Russian invasion of Ukraine when Russia ordered the revival of its espionage network in Britain. The effort was organized by Jan Marsalek, an Austrian business executive living in Russia to avoid prosecution for economic crimes back home. Marsalek still had a large number of contacts in Europe and was able to hire six Bulgarian men to carry out pro-Russian and anti-American operations in Europe. This w

Some success was achieved via online efforts, but these were redundant because pro-Russian propaganda was already being spread on the internet by Russian citizens and their western fans. This was not the first Russian propaganda effort in Europe and was the latest one to fail. Since 2022 Russia has spent over half a million dollars trying to establish espionage and propaganda operations in Europe. Not much success, mainly because the European counterespionage organizations were able to detect and disable Russian operations. The Russians undertook several similar operations in other European countries and had little success with these efforts. This clumsy espionage encouraged NATO countries to continue their support of Ukraine. Enthusiasm for that support was weakening in many NATO countries, especially those NATO nations that do not border Ukraine or Russia. Russia took the hint and abandoned most of those efforts in order to put NATO nations in the mood to tolerate a peace deal that the Russians could live

Russia is facing economic collapse. The economic sanctions have gotten worse as the war went on and Russians in general are fed up with heavy losses and miniscule gains. Ukrainian intelligence agencies believe the end is near for the Russian war effort in Ukraine and that it is not a matter of if, but when, the Russian war effort will collapse.