[Mariner]

You operate from the fallacy that Russia of the 2020s is the analog to Germany in the 1930s.

The government of Germany in the 1930s openly stated their intent to conquer all of Europe first, then the world. And also openly stated their intent to eliminate an entire genus of people.

Russia has stated no such ambitions, and has often stated a contrary position.

You also operate from the fallacy/fantasy that Ukraine is an actual country.

Historically, they have never been a country. In the very, very narrow window of history that anyone claims they were, most of that they were a vassal state of Russia.

Another element of you fallacious beliefs is that whether Ukraine is absorbed back into Russia, or is carved off as a separate nation is somehow within the sphere of US interests.

I’ll state this clearly: If Russia were to kill every Ukrainian now living, it would not be within the sphere of US interests. It is not possible for any occurrence in Ukraine to warrant the expenditure of a single US dollar.

[amnestynone]

Russia is an aggressive and dangerous predator country trying to expand its borders. It has the stated desire by Putin of reuniting “greater Russia”. If that is not the same thing it is very close. Russia now knows that it cannot conquer all of Europe but that does not mean that it does not want to expand its borders. For instance Putin has said that he regards Finland as a part of Historic Russia and given the context it was obvious that it meant to take over eventually and was already justifying future action. Ukraine is a real country and has been since it broke away from the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s.

As someone who grew up in the cold war and sometimes hot war atmosphere before the breakup of the Soviet Union. I have no desire to repeat that and do not want to see Russia resuming its aggressive and dangerous depredations. Most of the major countries in the world disagree with you that it is not in their interests to return to where we were 35 years ago.

We have spent massive amount of dollars to arm against Russia and if Russia were taken out we would not need to do that anymore so we would be saving money. It is waste of money to spend money on national defense and then not to use it when it is needed and it is needed now because it is in the interest of us and all of the other countries who would be put in harms way by a resurgent Russian predator state. And the fact that it is another country doing the fighting is a definite boon for us.

[amnestynone]

See 185 if you don't think Russia is a threat to this country. Or at last was until Ukraine started teaching them a lesson.

[Cronos]

Mariner - you are wrong in saying that You also operate from the fallacy/fantasy that Ukraine is an actual country. Historically, they have never been a country. In the very, very narrow window of history that anyone claims they were, most of that they were a vassal state of Russia.

That's bull - most countries in the world today haven't existed for "much of history":

• Germany existed only from 1870 and was divided from 1945 to 1989
• Italy and Greece existed only from the 1800s
• the USA in its current form existed only from the 1800s after the acquisitions of Hawaii, Alaska, etc.
• The UK exists in its current form as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland only since 1921
• The Russian federation exists only since December 1991
• Ukraine exists since April 1991 - so technically is a few months older than the Russian federation

Furthermore if you mean as a sense of a "nation", then both Muscowy and the Cossack Hetmanate have equally long histories -- Ukraine as the Hetmanate dates to the settlement of Kyiv in the 9th century -- and Muscowy is an offshoot of an offshoot (Vladimir-Suzdal) of Kyiv -- both as sister nations of equal age

Hetmanate state in 1649

The USA as nation has existed since the late 1700s -- while Ukraine has existed since the 9th century and then since the 1600s as a political entity.