“...If Europe is not onboard, why are we?...”
If Biden had not kept agitating for war, always stirring the pot, I wonder if EU and/or NATO would have worked out a compromise with Putin.
A statement that NATO would not encroach on the Russian borders any more, and maybe making the two Dombas breakaway countries sovereign would do it. Ukraine would not like it, but they would be better off than now.
Wrong. Putin has been building for this for a very long time. His goal (and he says it) is basically to restore the USSR in slightly different detail (almost more of a facist state with some freedoms for citizens who accept or at least don’t buck too much — yes, I know, we seem to be headed toward that too), but, a conquering empire regardless.
Any compromise that Putin would have accepted would have only made Putin stronger and embittered the majority of Ukrainians further.
All the secondary issues are minor by comparison: At its core this is about Putin expanding his empire and the desire of the majority of Ukrainians to have none of it.