According to US data, Russia already controls roughly 88% of the Donbas and 73% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, though the nation may even be open to handing over parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine it controls, as part of a deal, say sources.

Political messages don’t get much blunter than the Russian missiles that slammed into an American-owned manufacturing firm overnight Wednesday in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles away from the frontline trenches of a war with no end in sight.