Ceasefire agreement and a return to negotiations would be a start. They had already agreed to a deal when Boris Johnson showed up over a year ago though, and then Ukraine went back on it after his unscheduled visit. My assumption is that this agreement would have preserved Donetsk and Luhansk as either independent countries or as autonomously governed regions of Ukraine, that's changed now with the law making them part of Russia and I'm not entirely sure whether that's something Putin even has the power to change without a vote by those respective regions or the State Duma (unsure what mechanism might exist).

Either way there is no military capability to take them back by force as demonstrated by the complete failure of the counteroffensive, Ukraine will either lose them by force with a massive pile of bodies lost on both sides, or not. This is the reality of the situation. I care about avoiding the pile of bodies one way or another.

Well, the EU could have entered negotiations in good faith with Russia when all this started. The US could have not supported the Maidan coup. The coup Rada could have not declared their intent to destroy the culture and language of Russian speaking Ukrainians as their literal first act after assuming power. They could have granted the DPR and LPR the autonomy within Ukraine and protection of their language (and, frankly, ethnicity) that was initially requested. the EU could have honored Minsk and Minsk II. They could have negotiated in good faith at any point in this entire process. They could stop goading Ukrainians in to Russian defensive lines they have no chance of defeating to prolong the war. They could have allowed Ukraine to engage in attempts to negotiate a peace at any point in this process. They could have supported Zelensky's peace platform when he was elected.

There's no real solution now. Until Russia can no longer sustain it's operations or NATO does, this is going to keep going until Ukraine runs out of Ukrainians to send to their deaths.

At this point any solution that does not end in the complete collapse of nato is very bad for the third world. Because it shows the power the west has to arbitrarily apply embargoes. Even nuclear armagedon wold be betrer than that. If you think the yanks are unhinged now they ill be much more rabid after russia capitulates. So the only solution is to make trenches and fire artillery shells until the ukranians run out of amunitio or men.