Russia has achieved most of its military objectives and has about 30,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in I believe the Eastern sector. The Russians are telling them to surrender. This is going to be over soon. Zelensky is an idiot if he doesn’t get to the negotiating table and save his neck.
Vasko Kohlmayer of the American Thinker proposed a solution to this crisis:
It hard not to be deeply shaken by the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine. Terrible though it may be, it was not, however, unexpected. By taking matters into his own hands, Vladimir Putin did what he had warned he would do in the years leading up to this crisis.
Putin has always made it clear that NATO in Ukraine was a red line for Russia. Having realized that his concerns would never be properly addressed by his western counterparts, Putin decided to take radical action to stop the alliance’s expansion.
The Ukrainian people have already paid a heavy price, which will almost certainly grow much greater if this conflict is allowed to continue. And even though there is now no intention among the players involved to broaden the field of military operations, there is always a very real danger of escalation as these kinds of contingencies tend to be highly unpredictable.
There is, however, an easy way to put an end to this calamitous situation. This can be done by western guarantee that Ukraine will stay militarily neutral for the foreseeable future.
This is the only reasonable and moral course to take under present circumstances.
It is important to acknowledge the hard reality that Ukraine will not become part of NATO anytime soon. Vladimir Putin has made it sufficiently clear that he is not going to allow this to happen, and he is willing to fight to the death over this issue.
It is not a fight we want to get pulled into, not least because America does not have a vital national interest in Ukraine as such, much less in Ukraine being part of NATO. That by itself should suffice to keep us from confronting Putin over this matter.
Ukraine has never been part of NATO. Have we suffered some hardship, danger, distress, disadvantage, or loss because of it? Things were just fine for us – as well as the rest of the world – with Ukraine not being in NATO. Why should we now suddenly risk a conflict with Russia over Ukraine’s entry into that organization?
We also need to keep in mind that if we should foolishly engage Putin in some kind of military fashion, such a clash could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange which would almost certainly end in mutual annihilation or something close to it.
By guaranteeing Ukraine’s military neutrality, we would not lose anything we did not have before. The fact is that for much of their history Ukrainian territories have either been part of Russia or within Russian sphere of influence. Ukraine has never been an integral part of the western military apparatus. To insist that it becomes part of it at this point in time is irresponsible and reckless.
By agreeing to Ukraine not being part of NATO, nothing would be taken away from us. We would neither be militarily weakened, nor would we be impoverished economically. Ukraine’s absence from NATO does not put us in any worse position than we were a week ago, a year ago or a decade ago. Has Ukraine not being in NATO ever been a serious problem for us?
We must understand that the Russians feel the same about NATO in Ukraine as we would feel about a Russian base in Cuba.
The world is on the edge now and the Ukrainian people are experiencing the agony of suffering and death. They stand no chance against the onslaught of the much superior Russian forces, which have been so far acting with relative restraint. Contrary to what we have been hearing from the media, Putin has been trying to minimize the loss of life. Once the Russians switch into full fire mode, however, the Ukrainian people will be dying by tens of thousands.
This can be prevented by granting Ukraine military neutrality.