What's the alternative? Doing nothing while Russia invades countries in Eastern Europe one after the other?

Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine held Normandy peace talks back in January, some of the things the Russians asked for (paraphrased): Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk would be granted special status within Ukraine, security guarantees from NATO, a limitation of the number of troops stationed in Eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine restoring the fresh water supply that they cut off from Crimea. Conceding on some of those things might have been a good alternative to war.

Or, put boots in Ukraine or Russia, and get nuked.

Or, nuke Russia, and get nuked.

Our options are very limited and these alternatives are all terrible.

Ensuring Ukraine's neutrality instead of sacrificing it as a pawn?

Ukraine is a democracy. It's not up to us or anyone else to "ensure their neutrality" if that's not what they want. We already refused to allow them into NATO under the guise of "ensuring their neutrality" and look how that turned out.

>Ukraine is a democracy.

It's a country similarly corrupt as Russia (oligarch wise), that's used as a puppet to pressure it. They have big foreign involvement, and even had their democratically elected leader toppled just 8 years ago. Nominal democracy and huge foreign influence are not contradictory, rather they are the norm.

How do you ensure Ukraine's neutrality as another country? If they pick your side, you start with sanctions against them?

Doing the opposite of how you ensure their non-neutrality as another country.

Don't use them as pawns against Russia, don't get them into NATO, and have Russia sign and respect that - and ensure their borders from Russia and everybody else, fighting for them if necessary (not merely with hypocritical sanctions and condemnations after you've sacrificed them).

It is always easy to criticize. What do you think should happen? Just yield Ukraine to Putin? Did not work with Germany and Elsass-Lothringen, did not work with Russia and the Crimea, won’t work now.

What happens if you give in to a dictator’s demands isn’t that he is satisfied and stops. Instead he will realize that he got away with it, then try something bigger next time. There are countless examples of this in history.

Absent evidence to the contrary, my take on Putin's actions are that he wishes to reestablish the buffer region Russia has historically maintained around itself to absorb invaders. He controls every state near him except Ukraine, so I would let him have it and then he will have his buffer and hopefully be happy. He has nowhere else to go after that except actually attack NATO, after which there is world war, so the appeasement that is possible in this case is rather limited, it really can't go further than this.

Anyway, I get the argument that you should stand up to the bully, but this guy gives me the vibe that he's actually all-in and will (literally) lose his head if he loses this war. I think if this continues and he gets into a losing spot, he will gamble that his nuclear forces will win. I don't see any other option for him actually.

Really he controls NATO member Latvia? He controls Finland? He controls Poland? All these countries are only a few hundred miles away.

When both sides have nukes, you can't win by nuking things either.