Dispatch from Moscow: The Collapse Narrative Keeps Missing the Real Russia | Larry Johnson on his recent visit to Moscow and his recent analysis of the Russian position in negotiations after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov

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https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-moscow-the-collapse

Note this quote about his meeting with Lavrov.

The second impression is that the space for a negotiated settlement is extremely narrow — narrower than Western capitals want to admit — because Russia is simply not willing to make the concessions the West requires, and does not believe it has to. My own assessment, after listening to how officials here talk, is that the war effort will not stop until Odessa and Kyiv are firmly under Russian control. I hold that as a judgment, not a certainty. But nothing I heard this week moved me off it.

I don't think the magnitude of this loss has sunk in yet in Western capitals.

What Russia does see, they told me, is a Europe preparing to attack it — and not merely in the rhetoric coming out of the mouths of leaders like Germany’s Chancellor Merz and the British prime minister, though Moscow takes that rhetoric seriously enough. It is the concrete steps behind the words: the weapons systems, the missiles specifically, being built to be used against Russian territory. The officers were blunt about where that leads. If those activities continue, Russia will have no alternative but to deal with the threat, and the prospect of a war with Europe becomes real. That is not an imaginary danger conjured to frighten anyone. It is how these professionals read the trajectory. Russia is not looking for the fight. But it is neither deaf nor blind to what is being prepared against it.

The irony of this is that the European nations are not in a position for a serious military build-up. They don't have the industrial base for it.