Meanwhile, I don't agree w/everything in here, but I found this to be a pretty thoughtful take on the current situation. W/talk of actual realistic solutions, as opposed to just bellyaching, cherry-picked, and distracting (not to mention Putin-parroting) bullshit about phantom "Nazis" that appeal to outdated WWII emotions rather than to the reality of the situation:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/opin ... a-war.html

(Lemme know if anyone wants this copied from behind the paywall.)

The writer smartly touches on the paradox of NATO or no-NATO, as well as the irony of Ukraine, out of benevolence and deference to Russia, giving up a massive stockpile of nukes that it could have used as a threat to prevent exactly what's happening now (thanks, Bill Clinton).

Sort of explains how on one hand, the U.S. supports what most ordinary Ukrainians have wanted for decades, but on the other hand, the U.S. does so cynically and weakly, in a half-assed proxy war. B/c what most Ukrainians want from their country also happens to conveniently annoy Russia. But then America doesn't deliver nearly enough follow-thru to actually make good on its promises. W/Ukraine caught in the middle. And how this has been going on for like 30 fucking years.

As a (first generation) Ukrainian American, I wouldn't give a shit about losing Crimea and chunks of the Donbas (Ukraine's Rustbelt crossed w/Ukraine's West Virginia, ie post-industrial hell) for this fucking war to end ASAP.

On the other hand, short of joining NATO or becoming a Belarus-style Putin puppet state, how to you guarantee that Russia doesn't attack again the minute that Ukraine does something Russia doesn't like? (For a far softer example, see the article upthread I posted about how Russia manipulates the Republic of Georgia's wine market, even today.)

Russia already broke that promise twice after signing the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, supposedly guaranteeing it would never attack Ukraine, including Crimea, in exchange for Ukraine giving up the aforementioned nukes it could have used as a counterweight.

Again, Russia absolutely cannot be trusted as far as Ukraine is concerned. Never could be. About the only thing it seems to understand is brute force, as Afghanistan exhibited. At the same time, the current situation is also completely awful and very much unsustainable.