I work directly with Ukrainians - I talk to them several times a week via Zoom calls for work. While they're dodging bombs, they're slinging code. They've had to deal with electricity "curfews" lately, because their grid is getting hammered by Iranian drones.

I was working with them before the war, too. I'd see their European looking living rooms and home offices and not think much of it at all. Just a bunch of Europeans working with me to solve software problems.

One of them sent me pictures of his hometown, Lviv. Beautiful, beautiful city.

After the war started, one of the women that works with us had to work on the run as she fled to Poland with her child. Her husband stayed behind to fight.

I've always been a pacifist. The U.S., invastion of Iraq was just as illegal as the invasion of Ukraine.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I would like to see the U.S. push for a settlement, but I'll ask you, since I don't have an answer: How? How do we get Putin to sit down to chat about this?

In the meantime, Iran is sending drones to a depleted Russian army. That Russian army is sending fresh, UNTRAINED recruits to get slaughtered by Ukraine's professional soldiers.

The typical progressive, pacifist thought process that I've always aligned myself with simply doesn't play out here.

I will add that I always thought NATO expansion was stupid, but the deed is done, and nothing justified what Putin did.