Rob,
I doubt that the deal can be tweaked. I don't know what the Russian assets total, however on MSNBC (not Trump fans), some opinion-ater just said that the US outlay to date is 189 billion. Trump says 350 billion. Vance says 200 billion. My instincts tell me that the frozen Russian assets are nowhere near any of those numbers. Hopefully but doubtfully, you and I will receive a truthful accounting of those frozen assets. I suspect, without any personal knowledge,that they were also bartered in the prisoner exchanges.

Additionally, per a talking head on MSNBC, China controls most of the rare earth minerals and has the US somewhat over a barrel in that important regard, so there is that.

Zelensky has several problems. He is a small nation bordering a dangerous hostile neighbor. He trusted Obama and Biden to step in and body slam the Russians if the sh+t ever hit the fan. Biden made him think that he would but he didn't. Biden sent just enough weaponry to Ukraine to frustrate the Russians, yet let them grind down the corrupt and problematic Ukrainians until they are all spent on battlefields. My personal opinion is that both of those were his admins goals.

Had Harris gotten in, it would have continued to whatever uncertain ending.
Trump got in and said, this ends and everyone accepts the realities here or I walk away and let the chips fall.

I am not sending Americans to die dislodging the Russians from Ukraine. (and they wont dislodge if I don't)
I am not going to gamble on starting WW3 or launching nukes.
I'm not going to borrow money and send it to Eastern Europe to keep this going on behalf of a small corrupt country at a risk to the rest of the world.

Ukraine's problem is that the worst reality is clearly theirs. But the bright side for them; the dying stops, the destruction of property stops and they have cash flow from the American mining, with hopefully some assurance that the Russians wont invade the mining operation.

Will it last? I've no idea.
But I have a nephew who made a career out of the Navy. He face-times my wife every couple of weeks. If he told us that he was being shipped to the BLACK SEA, I would hate it. There are other people who feel that way in the US and if soldiers started shipping out and dying...it would become unpopular quickly.


Marty

https://soundcloud.com/sunset-poet-of-texas