You are looking at this in black and white terms. I think there is room for compromise, and this would be the off ramp from escalation. Another option is to split Ukraine into two or more countries; a Western country aligned with the EU, and an Eastern country aligned with Russia. This could be based on language and culture, as Ukraine was not well defined ethnically and combined several different regions.

It may be too late for this, but I think the Biden administration was thinking this was Putin’s goal early on. This maybe the way to solve the conflict.