Not like us at all.
Thinking that they are just makes for trouble."
Fulda Gap into West Germany:
For me, that's no problem, since I grew up in the Cold War of the 1950s & 1960s, served in the US Army in West Germany near the Fulda Gap, during the 1970s.
So, I fully understand how evil and aggressive the Old Soviets were, if we let them.
And I also know that a bright young 1970s & 1980s era KGB Lt.Col. was at the core of what it meant to be an Old Soviet.
So, for me, this is simply life as I remember it from my youth.
But for anybody who came of age after 1991 -- and that's everyone under about 45 years old -- this is a new, strange and perhaps terrifying world.
Especially, if you imagine that the greatest existential threats we face come from climate change, racial-sexual oppressions, gender dysphoria and MAGA "threats to Democracy" -- well, then Russia's invasions of its neighbors are beyond the scale of your concerns.
Yes, so far, most (not all) Democrats have dutifully followed their leadership, but I have long predicted Democrats will instantly abandon Ukraine, once Republicans are in charge again in 2025.
And some conservatives themselves (ourselves) are not immune to the siren-song of "Let rapists be rapists, let murderers be murderers and Russians be Russians, Ukraine is corrupt, so it's not our war."
Thursday's Trump-Biden "debate" -- or rather lack of -- clearly proves that the US will have new leadership in January 2025, if not before.
I think that will be Donald Trump in January and I'm certain he will try to work some kind of deal, though how, exactly, it might end up looking, I have no idea.
I think the only acceptable deal is Russia withdraws all troops from Ukraine's 2013 borders, pays reparations for the death and destruction Russia caused (circa $1 trillion today), and submits its entire current leadership to international war crimes trials.
If Trump can do that, he'll be among the greatest peacemakers ever.
If he just gives away chunks of Ukraine in exchange for a temporary truce with Vlad the Invader, then, no, not so much.
imho yrmv