It is easy for Americans to ignore the ongoing war by Putin’s Russia against an independent, democratic Ukraine, desperate to be part of the West.

Our cable tv news outlets feature almost everything other than the Russian war against Ukraine. We get extensive coverage of Jeffrey Epstein; Micah Parsons, the Dallas Cowboys holdout who was successful in getting traded to Green Bay for the highest salary ever for a non-quarterback, $188,000,000 over 4 years; National Guard troops assigned law enforcement duties in our Nation’s capital; a myriad of lawsuits challenging actions by the Trump Administration; firing Federal officials who had been confirmed to their posts by the U.S. Senate; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. upending decades of work by the Centers for Disease Control, and much more.

Poor Ukraine. No independent European nation has faced an invasion like Russia’s since World War II ended in 1945.

It is also easy to forget that at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States government, assuming that the Russians would take the Ukrainian capital Kiev in a week, asked Ukrainian President Zelensky where he wanted to go to lead a Ukrainian government in exile.

Zelensky, echoing Winston Churchill during the Battle of Britian in 1940, responded that he did not need a ride, he needed weapons.

To the surprise of the West, the Russian effort to take Kiev was a fiasco. The determination and bravery of the Ukrainian military to defend their homeland was heroic and effective.

While the Biden Administration rhetorically offered full-throated support of Ukraine, the U.S. military assistance was designed not to make Putin “mad.”

Ukraine, for example, was not to use American weapons to hit Russian targets in Russian territory. Ukraine was denied U.S. fighter aircraft for years that would have allowed Ukraine to better defend itself against Russian air attacks.

Western European nations, by contrast, did not hesitate to announce dramatic actions to protect themselves from Putin’s Russia.

In May 2022, just 3 months after the Russian invasion, both Sweden and Finland applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) where an attack on one NATO member is deemed an attack on all NATO members.

Sweden, a nation that remained neutral in WWII, saw Russia as an existential threat that only NATO membership could protect Sweden’s independence.

Finland, with an 800-mile border with Russia, finally had enough of being intimidated by its powerful neighbor. Like Sweden, Finland saw its existence as an independent nation best secured by membership in NATO.

By most historical measures, Putin’s failed invasion of Ukraine, thereby driving Sweden and Finland into NATO’s embrace, would be viewed as a Russian disaster. Nevertheless in 2024 Putin continued the illegal invasion, turning to Iran for weapons and to North Korea for soldiers to send off to their deaths in Ukraine. We see Russia joining in partnership with 2 members of the “Evil Empire” as so named by President George W. Bush after 9-11.

Donald Trump during his campaign for a second term said at a rally in March 2023 that the war would be “settled within 24 hours” if he won the Presidency.

Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump stated on dozens of occasions that he would resolve the conflict “either within 24 hours of his return to the White House or even sooner than that.”

On May 8, 2025, over 100 days into his Presidency, President Trump called for a 30-day “unconditional ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine and threatened sanctions if it was not respected. President Zelensky immediately agreed to Trump’s ceasefire proposal, Putin did not.

As of September 2025, 4 months after Trump’s “unconditional ceasefire” demand, Putin’s Russia has not agreed to a halt in the war, nor has Putin’s Russia faced any additional sanctions by the United States.

All wars end. The West, including the United States, must insist that Putin’s Russia not emerge as a “winner” as a result of its brutal, unprovoked and illegal “aggressive” war upon an independent Ukraine.

It appears Russia will ultimately have control over approximately 20% of Ukrainian territory. The West must guarantee the security of the remaining 80% of Ukrainian territory from any future Russian invasion. Anything less would be a Neville Chamberlain-style appeasement of Hitler in 1938. Such appeasement of Russia would be a historic disaster.

Fred Larson is a graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Yale Law School. He is also a 38-year private practice attorney and a retired Jamestown City Court Judge.