The coming Russian offensive will determine more than just the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine

There comes a time in any conflict when the casualties and deaths of either or both sides becomes so high that the prospect of a peace deal underpinned by compromise is deemed an act of treason.

The dead demand more dead and the living dare not defy them, and if a recent item in the Turkish newspaper Hurseda Haber is to be believed this conflict after one year has certainly accounted for more dead than any other in Europe since the Second World War. According to data claimed to have been compiled by Israel’s Mossad, so far 157,000 have been killed on the Ukrainian side and approximately 20,000 on the Russian.

If true it constitutes an eye-wateringly big Butcher’s Bill in terms of the lives lost.

Even if the above stats are untrue, and certainly the assessment of Russian dead appears to be low by comparison to the Ukrainian side, it remains beyond peradventure that this conflict has been particularly brutal with no sign whatever of anything approaching serious talks to bring it an end on the horizon. Escalation not diplomacy has been the preferred choice, with the…