The moment the US put its foot on the brakes was the moment the SMO failed.
Russia, leaving the tiresome bravado at the door, is a stagnant regional power at best and in no shape or form a serious threat to US hegemony in either Europe or elsewhere. The US' peer adversary is China and the Trump Administration's urgency to tie up Ukraine most likely will lead to an increasingly tense security situation in the Asia Pacific. Any talk about manufacturing a Russia-China split is premature in my opinion and unlikely to happen.
It's an open secret, but the SMO was designed to be a Crimea 2014 tier takeover of much of Ukraine. That's why the initial invasion force consisted of under 200 000 personnel, nearly half of them which were Rosgvuardia aka Russian military police aka Little Green Men. For once Scott Ritter was right by stating that the force amassed on the Ukrainian border could never take over a country the size of Ukraine. The Russian invasion force wasn't supposed to do much fighting. Instead the Russian forces were supposed to takeover Ukrainian critical infrastructure in a blitz and dismantle any forward military positions in the Donbass through cutting them off from logistics and hinterland .
Plan failed miserably. Russian VDV landed at Hostomel Airport and got decimated immediately by Ukrainian artillery. End of Putin's little plot right there and then. Hostomel Airport was supposed to be the beach head and landing ground for the takeover of Kiev. Laid bare the gross amateurism in the RAF on top of that which further envigored the Ukrainians and their allies.
Aside from Blitz warfare Russia had an extensive plan in place to achieve a Crimea 2.0 tier takeover, which was called Plan Ukraine in internal documents. Involved extensive bribing to the amounts billions of USD by the GRU. However the funds nearly all flowed into the pockets of corrupted Russian officials - self enrichment at the cost of you fellow man is a time honored local Russian tradition of itself.
That plan failed too and Ukrainian officials and statesmen aside from some areas in Northern Kharkov and the South (per example Melitopol went flawless) didn't turn. The result is the current 3 year sludgefest in the Donbass which is hurting Russia immensely. Needs emphasis that the US State Department was egging Zelensky on to leave Ukraine and form a government in exile - possibly Warsaw or London. If that would have happened Russians would have been in Kiev by the end of 2022. Very sus behavior though.
Long story short Russia is pinned down, in a bind and aware that none comes close to US power projection in Europe. Unlike the Westoid heavily propagandized Russia simps dwelling in online echo chambers like this one, the bigwigs in the Kremlin understand this, and will act towards it.
Putin is caught up in an unwinnable war on his doorstep without a feasible exit strategy. Man threw everything he had at it and couldn't move the frontline more than a few dozen kilometers. Military stalemate, despite the feverish reporting from usual suspects on 'collapses on the front' here, there and everywhere.
During the last three years Russia's military has been degraded and its reaching the bottom of all Soviet era deep storage sites. Literally burnt through 60 years of surplus vehicles in the span of three years. Frontline reports speak for itself. Faulty and inferior Nork artillery pieces, donkeys, golf buggies, mad max DIY Frankenstein vehicles, mopeds and refurbished T34s have all become a common sight. Economy wise Russia is engaging in massive money printing to get the war machine going, a 20 percent interest rate, official inflation at ~10 percent which means real numbers are at least double, a basket case currency that is in the early stages of collapse, and a military expenditure of around ~ 30 percent of the Russian Federal Budget.
They need a way out. Trump is willing to give them an acceptable deal even if it doesn't achieve a single one of Putin's stated strategic objectives per Feb 23, 2022. It's telling that the Ukrainians are more resistant to the idea of having to stop the fighting.
Russia is going to take the deal. Guaranteed.
I want to join the victory lap to state that I also said in D+3 that Russia had botched the operation and therefore had already lost strategically and that any semi-competent Army would have cut off the Ukrainian Army near Dnieprpetrovsk and ended the war within a week.
And now, the US is going to get all the spoils of war without losing a single soldier.
EU gets nothing except humiliation, financial drain and energy dependancy on the USA.
Ukraine gets to be a vassal state of America, essentially bought for 200 billion.
Russia gets... nothing really, except the chance to save face, i.e exiting the war without receiving the just ridicule deserved for its military and political ineptitude.