I get it. Everyone thinks Russia is evil. Putin is a monster that launched a war that has resulted in massive loss of life. I think the reasons he did it are complicated and will be debated for years, but implementing a blitzkrieg march straight through to the Netherlands is not one of the reasons. You’re quite naïve if you think that was the ultimate goal. You can debate all you want about good vs. evil, ulterior motives, blah, blah, blah… What’s important is – here we are. Now what?

How does this play out? The war hawks claim we’ll support Ukraine to the end. So what does that look like? Russia is not going to suddenly say sorry and pull back to pre-war borders. Therefore, the only way to force Russia back East is to inflict the complete and total annihilation of the Russian military.

Given that, I have an honest question:

Can anyone give a plausible scenario in which that happens? I’m honestly interested in hearing from someone who believes that’s possible.

Ukrainian losses are in the ~300,000 range, with another 100,000 or so wounded. Kill ratios are 8-15:1 depending on the region. Russia has decimated Ukrainian equipment and artillery. Ukraine has run out of fighting age males. They are snatching people off the streets and conscripting them into the military. They’re now taking women and old men. They’re threatening anyone who fled the country with arrest and forfeiture of their passport/citizenship if they don’t come back to fight.

Russia currently has about 750,000 men in theater, with plans to ramp up to 1.2 million. They have complete air superiority. They have very sophisticated aerial/drone and artillery targeting capability. They’ve ramped up their wartime production of shells, missiles, and ammo to the point they can fire many hundreds per day without fear of running out. They’ve built three rings of massive concrete defensive positions. There are hundreds of thousands of mines to cross before you even get to their defensive lines.

Please tell me how Ukraine defeats that?

The answer is they can’t. It would take the entirety of the US military plus NATO forces to attempt to defeat them. That would be literal world war three. The problem with that scenario is that Russia will not go quietly. I guarantee they’ll use tactical nuclear strikes along the western border of Ukraine before they allow NATO forces to advance further towards Russia. And we can all guess where that would lead.

So now what? Please, someone give me a scenario in which this plays out different if we keep going down our current path.

At this point it doesn’t matter any more if you think what Russia did was right or wrong. It has to stop, and soon. The longer this goes the closer we get to the nightmare scenario. I see our administration and virtually the entire congress gleefully speeding down this path with zero plausible ideas on how it ends.

I don’t know how we convince our leaders that what they’re doing is madness. They don’t listen to the citizenry and the press is in lockstep with these fools. How do we stop this?

I get it. Russia bad, Ukraine good. I don’t like what happened any more than the next guy, but I’m starting to think that if you have any interest in visiting Europe you may want to do it soon. It may be a smoldering crater before too long.