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I think you might have missed a bit of why the Lex interview focused on the question of Putin's reliability and goals - what is looming over the current game board is the upcoming negotiations for ceasefire conditions, that's why it consumed all the oxygen in the room. It does make sense in this context for Ukraine to lay out its position that Putin has made and broken treaty commitments before, and they need security guarantees to make sure that a ceasefire isn't just a way for Russia to sort out its force generation issues and have another go in a few months. That's their minimum position, and while they won't "concede" territory, they may well agree that they aren't getting all that they want there, and a deal will be thrashed out. It's very important for their security and therefore survival that they get this, and so they will raise it as a key talking point.
Meanwhile, Putin's position is crazy town, he still wants full war goals, which is a bit of a "lol, lmao" position for someone whose military position is as weak as it is currently (they are struggling to source any tanks and tubes for the first time over sections of the front, meaning that their fires superiority will have to come increasingly from an expansion of air, which seems impossible medium term) and whose country is starting to seriously suffer under the economic pressure. For example, "Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to the initial reports of the Turkish peace proposal, stating that "freezing" the frontline is "a priori unacceptable" for the Kremlin and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's previously stated conditions for ending the war — which amounted to full Ukrainian capitulation — remain "fully relevant." - that includes Ukrainian disarmament and massive additional territorial transfers.
Zelensky laying out a solid but reasonable ceasefire position to Trump and make Putin seem crazy is 80% of his US facing work currently, and he's doing a reasonable job of it I would guess. Some evidence of that is that his official position is pretty close to what you predict as the end state, without throwing out all of his haggling chips before he even starts.
A better interviewer would have drawn out far more interesting quotes with far better questions of course, but we had the interviewer we had, who sadly was Lex. There have been a lot of people who have talked about the different positions on the war over the years, and Pro vs Anti Ukrainians have written books on the topic, it's certainly not under discussed. We could discuss it here if you're interested, I have some opinions - but Putin's positions on the topic are certainly curious. He genuinely believes that Ukraine is a historical fiction, there are plots everywhere to split them off from Russia and that they need to forcibly reunited and driven to a satellite status - that was his interview with Tucker (I'm less impressed by his choice to devote all his airtime to ahistorical ramblings on Vladislav the Wise than you there) and his really odd paper in 2021 (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181). The problem of discussing his position is that... it isn't internally consistent, though it's certainly a mistake. For example, even if it was true (rather than bad historical fiction) his invasion was the perfect way to create a national identity, I literally couldn't plan anything better as a creation myth for Ukraine.
However, would you like a summary of roughly what the Ukrainian positions are vs people like Strelkov? It won't be why Russia launched the invasion (Prigożyn was pretty clear on that, and I think he was telling the truth), but it would give a steelman for both sides.
Russian imperialists (so to speak) believe the Ukrainian nation doesn't exist (well, that at least one encompassing the Crimea and Novorossia in general certainly doesn't exist) in the same way American white liberals believe the white race doesn't exist or the way Zionists everywhere believe the Palestinian people don't exist, the way Hungarian nationalists believe that there has never been a Slovakian nation etc.
We don't have to pretend that this is a worldview utterly alien to normies in NATO states.
That's certainly part of people like Strelkov's views as per "85 Days in Slavyansk" - and I agree that denying your opponent nationhood/legitimacy is a useful tactic that many groups have made use of, no disagreement there.
I just don't think it makes much sense to argue historical word games around it when the fake people in question have sunk a good chunk of your Black Sea fleet, routed Guards divisions and your economy is in real trouble as your new BRICS buddies aren't buying any exports other than gas. Ukrainians certainly now feel like a people, and you're unlikely to argue them out of it with a new paper - he has to get his economy back on track and do something to sort out his horrible attrition ratios if he's going to apply his will to them by force.
Those are genuine beliefs, not tactics.
By tactics I meant that those beliefs could actually have utility under some circumstances. Again I'm sure that people believe that classes of their opponents are deluded or illegitimate, it just doesn't really help much and launching a war on the belief your opponent isn't a real country anyway doesn't stop them fighting back.
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Something about a brave agrarian yeomanry defending thier land in the War of Northern Agression perhaps?
And if Ukraine had sought independence for the sole purpose of continuing to keep human beings as property (and listed that as the reason in their declarations of secession), I might concede that the Kremlin had something approaching the general neighbourhood of a point.
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