Unable to achieve significant gains on the battlefield, Russia has once again turned to terrorizing Ukraine’s civilian population. It launched a massive attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region using drones and ballistic missiles. According to the latest reports, 34 people were injured and ten were killed.Meanwhile, Washington continues to debate how the war in Ukraine should end. Some call for immediate negotiations, while others argue that support for Kyiv must continue until a decisive outcome is achieved on the battlefield. But the central question is not whether negotiations are needed at all. The real question is this: will they begin when Russia is in a position of strength, or when it is in a position of weakness?Contrary to what Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly claims in his public appearances about newly captured territories and the supposedly successful advance of the Russian army, the reality looks far more complicated. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently noted that Russia is now losing in three weeks as many soldiers as the Soviet Union lost during ten years of war in Afghanistan. This fact alone speaks volumes about the scale of the crisis the Kremlin is trying to conceal from its own population.