I get that Ukraine won’t consider the possibility of ceding any territory, nor should they. They probably don’t like their allies even mentioning it.

But, there’s the separate issue of not being able to join NATO with ongoing territorial disputes. Without much context to go on, I would almost interpret this as something more along the lines of “Ukraine could join NATO tomorrow if the dispute went away (by whatever method)”.

I feel like this would have been more true had it been posted 20-30 years ago. But while there’s some sociopathic types in books today, it’s a relatively small portion of the total.

I’d be curious to see what books in particular you have in mind, maybe from those published in the last month or so. I suspect what you really mean isn’t sociopath, but non traditional-heroic-archetypes. Which I would agree with, protagonists these days tend to be more humanistic rather than god-like.