>The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war.

The lazy “military industrial complex” take. Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders?

Your comment is basically the same as, “The west’s efforts have been to prolong hunger, not to stop it. When you’re suppling food you’re not acting to stop hunger. It should have been objectively obvious that the hunger would have stopped long ago had we just let people starve to death.”

> Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders?

First of all, I have been very explicit that "stopping the war" and "the best thing that can be done for the people of Ukraine" are not necessarily aligned. The fastest way of stopping the war would have probably been to supply Russia with arms and know-how, but I am not in any way advocating for such a criminal act.

Secondly, the West could have acted to capitalize on Ukraine's initial success in stopping the Russian blitzkrieg by convincing Ukraine's leaders to negotiate a neutrality agreement, similarly to Switzerland.

Instead of seeking to join NATO and/or re-conquer the land they lost in 2014, Ukraine could have accepted the loss of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, and started to design a way to become a neutral country, dealing with both Russia and the EU.

Instead, we have been supplying Ukraine with arms, intelligence and even targeting information and stoking their belief that they can actually win a war with Russia.

If we are right, then of course this will be a massive benefit to the people of Ukraine and arguably all of Eastern Europe, with a relatively mild cost to the people of Russia (a huge cost to the leaders of Russia though).

However, I believe that Russia will literally stop at nothing to prevent this outcome. I personally fully believe that Russia will nuke Ukraine before allowing it to win back the territory it has lost, especially Crimeea.

And that outcome, if it comes to pass, will be the worst thing that could have happened to Ukraine and its people, and probably the entire world. It would be much worse than being conquered by Russia in the initial attack, and definitely much much worse than a negotiated peace where they would cede territory to Russia.

> Secondly, the West could have acted to capitalize on Ukraine's initial success in stopping the Russian blitzkrieg by convincing Ukraine's leaders to negotiate a neutrality agreement, similarly to Switzerland.

The difference is that Russia does not respect any agreements it signs. Russia promised to not invade Ukraine or threaten its borders when it gave up its nukes, look how well that went.

> Instead, we have been supplying Ukraine with arms, intelligence and even targeting information and stoking their belief that they can actually win a war with Russia.

The west have been supplying Ukraine with weapons that appear to be making the difference. There’s a reason Russias advances have pretty much stalled entirely, there ammo depots and command centre keep exploding.

Turns out Russia is actually kinda not so great at this entire war thing.

> However, I believe that Russia will literally stop at nothing to prevent this outcome. I personally fully believe that Russia will nuke Ukraine before allowing it to win back the territory it has lost, especially Crimeea.

If Russia even blinks at a nuke the international response will make the sanctions look like child’s play.

I think Ukraine can win this fight, every week they get more and better weapons from the west whilst Russia keeps rolling out older and older equipment.

> If Russia even blinks at a nuke the international response will make the sanctions look like child’s play.

Why do you think this? Unless we're going to start WWIII over this, all of the things currently preventing us from imposing harsher sanctions on Russia will remain as strong - most importantly, Europe still needs Russian gas to be able to sustain its industry and population comfort.

It is true that India, China and all the other countries who didn't agree to the sanctions may change their tune. But Russia has to weigh the probability of that versus the costs to their regional power if they lose the war. And trusting in Putin's rationality is a pretty tough sell from my point of view.

> Why do you think this? Unless we're going to start WWIII over this, all of the things currently preventing us from imposing harsher sanctions on Russia will remain as strong - most importantly, Europe still needs Russian gas to be able to sustain its industry and population comfort.

MAD requires a overwhelming response to any nuclear use, it is true that Ukraine doesn’t have nukes so that response won’t be nuclear itself.

But if the world just “lets it go” then it would be speed up nuclear proliferation like no tomorrow.

I believe any use of a nuke is the end of Russia even if it’s a slow fall.

Yes, that argument is also true, and you haven't really addressed either.

> should be pretty objectively obvious that the war would have stopped long ago had the West not intervened

It would have never begun if we’d denuclearised Russia in the 90s, yet here we are. Facing, once again, a choice between appeasing a murderous dictator or not.