Then make a deal for no NATO in exchange for Russia leaving Ukraine. Take away Ukraine’s need and desire to join NATO.
Putin may trust Trump. However, he knows that we have another election coming up in 3 1/2 years. By then President Newsom may invite Ukraine to become a member of NATO. How can we make that kind of guarantee?
At the end of the cold war, Ukraine gave up its nukes based on Russia’s promise to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Why would Ukraine trust any deal with Russia? WRT Russia, NATO is purely a defensive alliance. Russia justified Ukraine’s desire to join NATO by doing what Ukraine feared most - an invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
I believe that deal has been offered before, and either used by Europe as a ruse to buy time to build Ukraines military or rejected by Ukraine which is obsessed with being part of the varsity team
I could get onboard with that.
Oh balderdash. Russia is not going to go to war with NATO. It would be the equivalent of me poking my 74 year old finger in Mike Tyson’s chest and telling him he walks like a girl. Russia cannot defeat Ukraine let alone the combined might of the USA, France, Britain, Germany, Poland, the Scandinavian countries, and the rest of Europe. We know it and they know it, and no nukes are not a viable solution to limited conventional power. Of course that won’t keep Russia from rattling the nuclear sabre, but that is all for show for their own public.