@dreamingbohemian
When people talk about the partition of Ukraine they usually mean dividing it along the Dnieper, i.e. cutting Ukraine into eastern and western halves. This would obviously not be an acceptable outcome.
The recognition of the DNR and LNR would not be nearly as big a deal. They are relatively small regions on the Russian border. They have been controlled by Russia in practice for 8 years now. Ukraine can live without them for now.
The most pragmatic thing would be to take a long-term view about bringing those regions back into Ukraine. First, whenever Putin departs, this successor might be more willing to negotiate on this. But second, especially if Russia remains sanctioned, people in those republics will increasingly feel resentful and left behind as their living conditions worsen while the rest of Ukraine becomes more integrated with the West. They may eventually want to return.
Letting Russia have the DNR/LNR and Crimea may feel like rewarding his aggression but this was the status quo before the war, so it's not changing things that much in practice. I think Ukraine could live with this if it meant ending the war. Then focus on long-term winning them back (though I don't think this will ever happen with Crimea).
Any final version of a partitioned Ukraine will depend on how far in Putin's army can penetrate.
Whatever Putin's Russia has at the end of it, they're likely to want to keep hold of it. After all, the Russian narrative is very heavily that Ukraine is anti-Russia thanks to other European states plus the USA and that Ukrainians as a result are victims of a false consciousness. In other words, Putin's Russia sees Russia (Novorossiya) and Ukraine along with Belarus (Malorussia) as one country with Moscow as the centre of reunification.
It is naive to think that whoever leads Russia after Putin will be any more amenable to the West and will give up any land gains in a future without Putin. To think so is to not understand how both the Russian political elite and the vast majority of the Russian citizenry view the West as well as NATO.
"....[the] widespread Russian suspicion that Washington is seeking to assure Russian status as a loyal vassal by means of further disintegration, weakening and decline of the Russian state.
The gradual conversion of the Russian elites to such a view in the 1990s was the main reason for the collapse of Russia’s pro-Western orientation in the 1990s. The proponents of a pro-Western Russian policy (which essentially implied Russia becoming a U.S. satellite) have since been completely marginalized because they cannot explain what tangible benefits such a course would bring Russia to outweigh the inevitable losses for Russian national security and statehood in general.
Even now, the few remaining Russian liberals tend to avoid any discussions on foreign policy and national defense issues. Much to the disappointment of their Western “friends,” they make it clear by doing so that a well-articulated, pro-Western political platform has essentially ceased to exist in Russia.
Russia’s efforts against NATO enlargement are a result of the foreign policy consensus that had coalesced even before the arrival of President Putin....
....NATO came to be seen by most Russians as a deeply hostile, anti-Russian military coalition long before the current crisis. Russians believe that NATO’s sole task is to maintain a state of confrontation with Russia, and most would subscribe to the idea that “without Russia, there would be no NATO.”"
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based think tank Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
That is how a majority of Russians think and this informs their views on the war against Ukraine. The next leader after Putin will be just as hardliners and the Russian cabinet is full of anti-West politicians.
Ukraine does NOT have the military capability to take back Donbas, Luhansk or Crimea now or in the long term future. The Ukrainians certainly don't have the political clout to do so either.
It's much more likely that Ukraine will, once certain assurances are given to the Ukrainian minority in those areas, simply accept they are now permanently partitioned from them.
But partition of any kind will not occur until Putin's Russia fails:
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to take Kyiv
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to install a pro-Russia puppet government
Otherwise, Putin's Russia will pursue a scorched earth policy and raze major Ukrainian cities to the ground before retreating with the parts of Ukraine they currently hold which isn't just three disputed areas.