So what you think your country should do about Ukraine crisis ? being Neutral and lift all of its sanctions on Russia ?

I would argue that it is the war hawk's case to make as to why the US is this involved in the first place, to the point where the US President is echoing Lord Farquad in regards to the sacrifice he's willing to make us make in order to strike a blow at *their* rival.

America had a clear fork in the road: Take a tough line with Putin and prevent an invasion before it happens, or take a soft line with Putin and allow him to invade. Joe Biden chose the latter. We locked into that course. The best thing we can do now is minimize harm and build our position stronger for the future. Instead we're maximizing harm and weakening our geopolitical position. Now I could argue the merits to Trump's hardline approach and say we should have escalated to stand off against Putin before this could start, but its spilled milk, too late. From where we are right now, preventing a humanitarian disaster, stabilizing world markets and the US petrodollar dominance makes a whole lot more sense than turning Ukraine into Syria and upgrading from the old American pasttime of {sending arms and aid to regressive islamic terrorists} to the new sexy {sending arms and aid to nazi war criminals}. If America was "neutral", we could have helped negotiate the withdrawal, make it as bloodless as possible, maybe establish new borders for a Western Ukraine by just appeasing Putin with territorial concessions. And the comparisons to Churchill/Chamberlain write themselves, but the difference here is the important part: Appeasement makes sense if you're already going to forfeit and fall on the opponent's mercy. You want to minimize your losses when his sword is at your neck. What doesn't make sense is throwing down your weapons and armor, announcing your surrender, and then running up to the opponent screaming like a maniac and trying to bludgeon him with your fists

I dont need a "if" { hypothetical time travel }
I need you answer to the question;

What are you proposing to do NOW ?

Minimize the harm. Set up evacuation corridors, negotiate a ceasefire, turn over control of the encircled cities to Russia, withdraw government officials to Lviv. Leverage sanctions relief and end of embargos in exchange for Russian cooperation so we can return the status quo and save face at the same time. Send humanitarian aid and help rebuild bombed out infrastructure. It doesn't require a lot of imagination to come up with steps to not turn a country into another Syria

and what specifically did the tough line entail? threats of sanction we're seeing Russia endure currently? all out war over Ukraine?

The real fork to me was taking them(the Russians) seriously over the last few years. Ukrainians undoubtedly with the West's advisors thought that Russia was bluffing and they can just tie them up in talks for eons meanwhile inching closer to joining the EU, NATO, etc. Now what's going to happen is instead of having some control over those eastern pro-Russian regions they will forfeit all control, with their armed forces and cities decimated.

OK so you are proposing to 1/ surrending to Russia, 2/ to remove actual democratically elected government of Ukraine (and to let Russian put his own), and 3/ to partially pay yourself a part of damage done by Russia.


=> no comment .

Trump didn’t have a tough line. Only reason Russia didn’t invade under trump was because they were getting things they wanted from him. Trump was on the verge of pulling the US out of NATO, as an example.

Russia didn’t invade because they were benefitting from the Trump administration geopolitically, not because they were afraid of him. Challenge anyone to change my mind.

What did Russia get from Trump?