It sadly does nothing to solve the real geopolitical issue that the US have in this century, namely the rise of China.

And who is China's strongest ally in the world?

No-one is. If that's a hint at Russians, then no: they were on a brink of war throughout the 70s, tensions in the 80s, basically ignored one another since the 90s, however since the start of Ukraine war and both being on the receiving end of sanctions they started to drift closer, which could be described as "the West pushing Russia into Chinese embrace."

Stopping / freezing means russia continues to stock up at the current rate and and takes odessa and kaliningrad once trump term is up. The only option is for to create even more cost efficient+robust+sophisticated+massed drones and slug it out

Kaliningrad is already Russian, I'm not sure what city / country you meant but probably not Kaliningrad.

I get that. As I said, maybe eventually Putin gets deposed.

But (a) it is basically prolonging the losses for Ukraine, and (b) assumes that Russian won't escalate (maybe with nukes).

Russia knows that we're not going to blow up the world to save Ukraine. At some point, they will cross a threshold and we will have to back down.

Russia can’t escalate any more than they already have without directly attacking the US or with nukes, and in both cases, it’s suicide. They are struggling to take on Ukraine, let alone the US, and literally no country of influence would back them if they attacked or escalated to nukes.

Russia took the US with social media and an election. Not bullets.

I agree with you, but that's not what's being discussed here. If it were to come to kinetic warfare, Russian wouldn't stand a chance against the US as evidenced in Ukraine.

Would the current US president actually order the US military to defend the country against a Russian invasion? That's not exactly clear anymore.

1. Is not about Ukraine. It's about the US and Europe. They benefit massively while Ukraine suffers the losses on their behalf.

Think about it. They support Ukraine by sending them surplus or aged weapon systems while modernising and funnelling money to their military industrial complex (with public support!). In return Ukraine uses those weapons systems to keep Russia tied up in a war, exposing Russia's most modern weapon systems and providing a huge amount of information on how to fight a drone war.

This is a great investment independent of what happens in or to Ukraine, basically they turn weapons they needed to replace or get rid of anyway into intel, new weapons, political brownie points at home and a weakened adversary.

China doesn't mind it that much either, though they enjoy it less because they had invested fairly heavily into Ukrainian infrastructure that is being destroyed. Keeping Russia isolated makes it easy for them to extra cheap oil & gas, push for pipelines that flow to China instead of towards Europe and also offload a bunch of their industrial surplus now that their requirements are winding down and the rest of the world is trying to tariff them for dumping.

So basically the problem is 1. is good for almost everyone except Ukraine and Russia. Trump for whatever reason can't understand that and just wants to throw a tantrum as is befitting for someone of his intelligence.

None of the solutions are good for Ukraine. So the least we can do is not decide for them but support them in their decision.

> It's about the US and Europe. They benefit massively

EU (germany) gets increasingly deindustrialised, to a big part due to energy costs associated with the war, and the related sanctions and sabotages. This war would not have even started if the previous US administration(s) had not pushed to that direction, europe was up to that point signing energy deals with Russia, they had no incentive for a full blown war. EU was following, and now they run around like headless chicken with no purpose, goal and prospects while Trump is basically trying to cash out of the situation. But I agree with you that, whatever this has to do with, the least is about Ukraine itself and democracy. Sadly we are never gonna move on from this false narrative until it is too late.

How does Europe gain from preventing Russia from invading and annexing a European country that wishes to be part of a European alliance?

Russia is not going to use nukes.

What makes you so sure? They have already said that certain events (e.g., Russia itself being "threatened") would make them use nukes.

We are not going to blow up the world to save Ukraine and Russia/Putin knows this. If he decides to use nukes what are we going to do? What can we do?

Ukraine literally invaded Russia with Western weapons in support. The nukes did not fly. The nukes will not fly.

Right. And also you can never take that threat seriously when Russia is using it while on the offensive, because following that logic you should let them do whatever they want because nukes.

>We are not going to blow up the world to save Ukraine and Russia/Putin knows this. If he decides to use nukes what are we going to do? What can we do?

They are not going to risk their security for Ukraine. They wouldn't risk starting a nuclear war over Ukraine, it's stupid, even for their standards

Russia is more likely to use nukes against US if Russia wins in Ukraine.