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What is saddest about all this is it didn’t have to happen. A new piece in Foreign Affairs states, “[I]n April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.” So essentially, in April, less than two months after the beginning of the war, the parties involved were close to agreement with returning to the status quo of what existed the day before Russia invaded. But the agreement collapsed. Why? Two words: Joe Biden.

Pravda, a Russian mouthpiece, claims that Boris Johnson tried to block any peace negotiations. Again, that’s Pravda, but it comports with known facts and Johnson never denied saying in private what he’d already said in public.

So, essentially, the combatants had resolved their conflict, only to have the west appear saying it would rather have more war. The “they” in that statement is telling. Johnson was no doubt acting on behalf of the man who “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”; that is, Joe Biden.

At the very moment when a fragile peace could have been worked out and negotiators begun to solve the differences between Russia and Ukraine, Joe Biden steps in and does what he does best, mess things up. The timeline here is interesting. Even though, on March 10, the US promised Ukraine $13 billion and, on March 26, Biden told the world that Putin “cannot remain in power,” the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were still able to come to an agreement on a peace deal. And staggeringly, Joe Biden scuttled it.

Here we are in September, and much of the world is in recession, prices for everything are up dramatically, the US has provided Ukraine with upwards of $60 billion in aid, and Europe is facing energy shortages and skyrocketing prices just as winter approaches. And now nuclear war is in the air.