I am horrified at the statement of Defense secretary Lloyd Austin at his press conference in Poland following a secret visit to Kyiv.  Via The New York Times:

"We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a news conference in Poland, following his secretive trip to Kyiv with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "It had already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability."

YouTube screen grab.

The way Russia is weakened, of course, is by being ground up in a prolonged war that is destroying Ukraine.  That beleaguered nation is being used as an abrasive to dull Russia's war-making capacity.  That's a job that destroys Ukraine in the process of harming Russia.

There is no room for negotiations that could halt the destruction of Ukraine in this goal.  The longer the brutal war drains Russia's resources, the better in terms of Austin's goal.