How Does the Ukraine War End?

Our LGM convention in Athens, GA this weekend led to one conversation, mostly between myself and Farley as I recall, about the end of the Ukraine war. My position was quite simple–I support funding Ukraine but not at the cost of the complete cave on immigration that Democrats offered. So thanks to the Republican Party for killing that bill for short-term political gain, which will probably backfire on them anyway since Democrats can now say they had this offer and Trump killed it. Anyway, one part of this conversation, which we certainly agreed on, is that Ukraine will never defeat Russia. Better American funding will improve the terms of the ending of this. And that needs to happen, preferably in a more or less stand alone bill but if it gets tied to Israel, well, I’m not shocked.

But the question that everyone has to ask is, how does this end? That’s because there is no way Russia is going to lose on the battlefield. Ukraine isn’t going to back to pre-2022 borders, not to mention pre-Crimean invasion borders. I mean, it’s just not going to happen. It’s unjust, but Putin has a lot of power, even if this invasion was disastrous for him since no one actually respects their military capabilities anymore.

Of course, it would help if the Republican Party was not objectively pro-Putin. And maybe the Navalny murder helps move some votes to more Ukrainian help. That can certainly improve the terms of the end. But the end does have to happen someday and that ain’t going to be in some Russian defeat.

I have no good answers here. But we do have to be realistic about the future of Ukraine here.