[OutsiderFan]

The West gets their hopes up when they hear about negotiations and then a day later find out it was a Putin hoax.

Who gets their hopes up?

People like me - and I don't think I'm in a small minority - know not to trust anything Russia says, and that it breaks agreements with impunity. The only way to contain Russia is with force and strength.

The whole reason Putin made Russia invade Ukraine was because he thought the west and NATO were weak. I've been reading about this from Russia experts since the 2016. Obama and the west invited Brexit and other Russian attacks on western democracies after not doing enough to push back on the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Western country political parties cozied up to Russia since 2014 - I will assume after Russian money washed into their political campaigns - and went soft on Russia. Allowing the Olympics in Sochi was just blindingly stupid, and the whole western world was OK with it. Ever trusting Russia under current management is a mistake and only enables more bad behavior.

If you look at the current map of Ukraine, the only way to contain Russia is force keeping it out, but even if Russia is driven out, even of Crimea, it is still completely capable of firing missiles and dropping bombs just to terrorize and destroy as much of Ukraine as possible. So the question becomes, what will the west do? Allow Ukraine to be slowly pulverized even without Russian Army in country, as long as tactical nukes and WMD aren't used? At some point a decision has to be made about going after Russia directly if Ukraine is to be salvaged as a functioning country, right?

[OutsiderFan]

The West gets their hopes up when they hear about negotiations and then a day later find out it was a Putin hoax.

Who gets their hopes up?

People like me - and I don't think I'm in a small minority - know not to trust anything Russia says, and that it breaks agreements with impunity. The only way to contain Russia is with force and strength.

The whole reason Putin made Russia invade Ukraine was because he thought the west and NATO were weak. I've been reading about this from Russia experts since the 2016. Obama and the west invited Brexit and other Russian attacks on western democracies after not doing enough to push back on the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Western country political parties cozied up to Russia since 2014 - I will assume after Russian money washed into their political campaigns - and went soft on Russia. Allowing the Olympics in Sochi was just blindingly stupid, and the whole western world was OK with it. Ever trusting Russia under current management is a mistake and only enables more bad behavior.

If you look at the current map of Ukraine, the only way to contain Russia is force keeping it out, but even if Russia is driven out, even of Crimea, it is still completely capable of firing missiles and dropping bombs just to terrorize and destroy as much of Ukraine as possible. So the question becomes, what will the west do? Allow Ukraine to be slowly pulverized even without Russian Army in country, as long as tactical nukes and WMD aren't used? At some point a decision has to be made about going after Russia directly if Ukraine is to be salvaged as a functioning country, right?