Previous attempts of de-escalation have gone nowhere: Russia continues to attack its neighbours and annex their territory, or create puppet separatist states (M

Previous attempts of de-escalation have gone nowhere: Russia continues to attack its neighbours and annex their territory, or create puppet separatist states (Moldovan Transnistria in 1992, Georgian South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 1990s and 2008, Ukrainian Crimea and Donbass in 2014 and now the entire territory of Ukraine). If the Russians had succeeded with Ukraine, Lithuania or Poland would be next. Or Finland, or Sweden, or any other neighbour Russia deems weak enough to conquer with direct military force. You get my point. Russian territorial expansion is a recurring pattern, and no amount of western self-humiliation via "de-escalation" was going to end it. It had to end somewhere. As a Ukrainian who had to spend several weeks in evacuation in Lviv this spring, I'm glad it ended in Ukraine. (At least the new US Lend-Lease Act gives us hope that the wave of Russian territorial expansion will end in Ukraine.) Otherwise we'd have mass executions of civilians, as we had in Bucha, all over the 40 million country. A new Holocaust. For Ukrainians, as a nation, US Lend-Lease Act, military equipment aid from UK and other western nations who participated in Ramstein defence conference is the real salvation. And the day the Russian invaders are expelled would become a second Independence Day, as in the history of Kuwait and Iraq.