The later. They want a perpetually weekend Russia that will never be in a position to threaten neighbors again. A negotiated settlement allows Russia to take their men and gear back home, and re-strengthen. Conversely, a conflict that is too long allows Russia to strengthen internal production of materials and recruitment of men, so that is problematic as well. But slowing support and drawing out the conflict to a good degree forces Russia to keep tossing men and equipment into the "meat grinder" and overall weakening them.
I don't see sanctions being relaxed for a decade . . . if not longer.
The sanctions may be there on Russia for a long time. Their easy oil and gas market in Europe is gone for good. They will find customers in other parts of the world, but they will need to do some retooling of their infrastructure to get their fossil fuels to market better.
I've seen some things lately on Russian culture and how they have been preparing for this throughout Putin's time in office.
First this from Kamil Galeev
Thread by @kamilkazani on Thread Reader App
Dmitry Galkovsky is sort of the Russian Alex Jones (American "out there" muck raker), but he has had more traction in mainstream Russian culture than Jones has in the US. He has a wacky theory that all history between 1400 and 1648 is fiction and that Protestantism existed first and Catholicism was an attempt to supplant Protestantism. It's competing with the flat Earthers for nuttiness, but he's popular in Russia.
Serej Sumlenny has another angle on the same theme
Thread by @sumlenny on Thread Reader App
From this latter piece I see a fallen empire living in the past. Different empires through history have had this reflecting on a past that is now lost and a sense of "we were once great" with a longing to be great again, even though that ship has sailed.
There is a sense in the popular media memes in Russia that they can become great again by picking a fight with the west. It's loony but that is what the government is peddling.
This is popular among the population who remember the USSR. The last decade of the USSR was probably the best decade for the average Russian ever. The 90s was a very different experience in the west and in Russia. The west had a pretty good decade with a lot of optimism about the future, while Russia had a bleak time trying to come to terms with the loss of their empire.
Another theme in Sumlenny's article is Russian popular literature keeps coming back to the theme of Russians humiliating the west and western leaders. There is a strong sense of humiliation about the 90s among those who lived through it. They want to turn the tables and heap that shame on the US and or UK.
George HW Bush had a plan like the Marshall Plan to bring Russia into the rest of the world, but he couldn't get it through Congress. It would have cost the US some money, but we wouldn't be here now if he had managed to pull it off.
Instead Russia was left to its own devices and all the Soviet enterprises got taken over by essentially the Russian mafia and the people got some table scraps, but not much else.