I wrote this many times, the lowest blood price for subduing Russia is a NATO-wide airborne operation to behead Russian government, and a mother of all airlifts.
You fight a mafia state the way you fight a mafia, by simultaneously dismembering, and beheading it.
To completely subdue Russia, NATO has an option to do first strike nuclear attack with half of its combined arsenal along the lines I wrote above.
Russia is a hypercentralised state beyond imagination. Russia will cease its existence as a state if Moscow region is taken out, and the most limited counterforce attrition is ensured.
Anyway such attack would prompt similar ICBM response, they are generally quite incompetent as we can see in Ukraine, but not that incompetent to not have this working.
And nobody in west is going to justify killing few million civilians in Moscow, our society is well beyond that point.
Corrected that for ya.
I don't offer quick safe easy solutions to above issues. I don't think they exist. Don't vote for Trump-like populists effectively trying to sell rest of western world to Russia just because they are republicans just as you? Don't leave weak states at mercy of all-grabbing merciless powerful industries?
That's an empty phrase and wish too, there are reasons why Trump got voted in and almost won second time, he just said things too many people wanted to hear. I would say reasons of very polarized US society, you are either with us or against. As we can see ie in UK its not unique to vote populists in place even in countries with strong democracy.
I don't see what can be done more effectively in this multi-polar world to a bad state owning tons of nukes. Even if only 1% would be functional its still too many.
Or you want to ignore whats happening just to keep business going and prices steady? I don't think anybody in US government really cares about Ukraine or its people, but they are logically helping damage their adversary and Russia is working hard to give them moral/PR upper hand. But make no mistake, this war is about future of Europe, not just Ukraine. If Europe is split into pre-1989 order, US and its power projection will be severely weakened.
Have a hit squad taking down just Putin? Good luck there, I think as KGB agent he should have this covered. I think 1 billion USD and US citizenship & evac with family to anybody in his inner circle who would take him down would have higher chance. But maybe 10 years down the road it would be viewed as a very bad decision. You want to reform Russian society? I'd call that an impossible task for an external entity.
So, what's the solution to this situation?