It ends hopefully with Ukrainian and NATO forces parading on the Red Square in Moscow to celebrate victory, denuclearization, demilitarization and denzification of Russia, prosecution of war criminals and internationally organized democratic elections to find new legitimate leadership for Russia and possibly regional referenda to find out which parts of Russia still want to be Russia. And of course Russian citizenship for every Ukrainian that would like to trade Ukrainian citizenship for Russian citizenship.
Russian propagandists might say so in order to stir up anti-Ukrainian and anti-NATO sentiment, based on the narrative that this whole conflict was engineered by NATO in order to create a pretext to attack Russia, but it's absurd. It would also mean Putin and the pro-war faction in Russia were idiots manipulated by the west.
NATO forces haven't fought in this war so there would be nothing for them to parade about. Ukraine has no interest in going further than the internationally recognised borders, and nothing to gain from doing so. There has never been any military threat against Russia itself, except for the harm Russia has foolishly exposed itself to by going to war.
I have exactly zero doubts that Russia incited this war. I just described my prefered ending of it.
The parade is necessary because the lack of a parade after Russia lost the cold war was what created Putin. Just like the lack of a parade in Berlin after the WWI spawned Hitler decades later. Russians just didn't understand how hard they lost.
On the parade I'd see NATO represented as it fought. So just few few officials and NATO equipment. Operated purely by Ukrainian soldiers. They might be NATO soldiers at this point or just soon to be NATO soldiers (as Ukraine should be admitted into NATO in a blink of an eye after the victory).
I'm fully aware that this ending might not happen because Ukraine doesn't have much to gain from pushing Russian army to Moskov not just to the borders but one might be hopeful.
This war showed that Russia is dangerously rotten and talking about military threat to Russia is completely out of place. It's a saying that a garbage dump might be threatened by a possible hostile takeover by Amazon. Getting in there would be a charity mission not a threat.
