Vivek Ramaswamy, a candidate for the presidential nomination from the Republican Party of the USA, who is in the top three in terms of popularity among Republican supporters, promises to recognize the Russian occupation of Ukraine and block its path to NATO if elected president.
Sorry for the headline. I don't know why they don't just say it's Vivek Ramaswamy.
To that end, I will accept Russian control of the occupied territories and pledge to block Ukraine’s candidacy for NATO in exchange for Russia exiting its military alliance with China. I will end sanctions and bring Russia back into the world market. In this way, I will elevate Russia as a strategic check on China’s designs in East Asia.
I see Vivek Ramaswamy is gunning to be the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century. Giving Putin what he wants is like trying to appease Hitler. Putin's expressed ideology is for Russia to conquerer Europe. He is not going to stop with the Donbas region or Ukraine. The best thing for everyone, including the Russian people, is for Russia as we know it to collapse into smaller countries.
Not to mention by supporting Ukraine, the US is sending a clear message to China that they will be met with force if they try invade Taiwan. It doesn't benefit anyone other than Russia and China to work with them and give them what they want. Dictatorships are always going to be incentivized to backstab democracies. Democracies are going to champion human rights, where as other dictatorships will look the other way. So no matter how hard you try to separate Russia and China they are always going to be incentivized to work with each other.
Putin is not Hitler, for many reasons, but chief among them is his incompetency. Hitler didn't get bogged down in czechoslovakia for a year. Putin has almost no chance of conquering the whole of Ukraine, much less the entirety of Europe.
Yeah no Putin rushed that one and has been interfering in his generals' decisions from day one. There's tons of incompetence in the Russian army but Bakhmut levels of strategic self-owns, no, we can safely assume that that kind of stuff was a political decision.