[jgannon]

It's hard to have a face-saving way out of this, but something must be done. The sad truth is, the U.S. and Ukraine should have agreed to Ukraine being a neutral state a long time ago. But Russian hysteria, "Putin bad" thinking, and self-defeating U.S. delusions of hegemony kept that from happening. If they had simply dealt with Russia and engaged in the world of realpolitik, the invasion never would have happened. As far as admiring Zelensky, all I have to say, is that he is not going to defeat the Russians, and the U.S. and NATO are not going to directly fight the Russians. The U.S. encouraged Zelensky to play a dangerous game and it blew up in their faces. The U.S. never had any intentions of backing Ukraine up militarily.

The longer Zelensky holds out, the more his people are going to die. He may be trying to negotiate, but anything short of a promise to remain a neutral state will fail. Putin is not going to back down now. With some countries contemplating sending planes and Russia being on nuclear alert as well as stating that sanctions are tantamount to an act of war, the situation is getting more and more dangerous. Zelensky is frankly being selfish and self-defeating by asking the U.S. to establish a no-fly zone and not reading the handwriting on the wall.