It's hard for me not to take sides because I've been working with Ukrainians for the last couple years remotely. When I started working with them, they worked peaceably from their homes or offices. I saw them on Zoom calls with backgrounds at their homes that looked like American homes. A hutch or curio in the background, maybe some artwork, or a nice couch, or a balcony overlooking a patio.

Then, Putin attacked and took much of that away in a matter of days. One of my co-workers fled with her child to Poland for a few months. She returned to Lviv and to an electricity rationing regime because the Russians were bombing the shit out of their infrastructure.

Putin has taken the same approach he took to Chechnya when he leveled Grozny to the ground. Nobody talks about that because so few people know about it.

There is no negotiating with Putin. Not because we shouldn't negotiate, but because he is simply not interested in negotiation, and couldn't be trusted if a negotiation actually led to some kind of agreement.

The intractability of the problem stems from the historic truth behind Russia - it is an almost impossible country to win against militarily because they have nearly unlimited resources and an endless supply of people, mostly non-Russians from the Russian hinterlands, that Putin can send to the slaughter.

At the same time, I don't trust the motives of the American military industrial complex, either. For obvious reasons. They're always seeking a new playground to test their newest toys, and there's a lot of money to be made.

So what is the solution?

There isn't one. Not as long as Putin is around. But if Putin goes, who replaces him? Someone worse? The dude who runs the Wagner Group is starting to make noises about getting into politics. That should be fun.

The ultimate result of all this is that Ukraine will be, within the next two or three years (because this won't end) completely destroyed the same way Chechnya and Syria have been.

The Ukrainian middle class will flee to other countries once the infrastructure is completely destroyed beyond repair -- Ukraine has limited means to withstand years of this.

The U.S. will fecklessly pretend it can do something to stop it, but in the long run, history will repeat itself. You can't win a war against Russia. It's simply not possible.

And you can't negotiate with Putin. It's simply not possible.

That leaves the destruction of Ukraine.

The world, instead, needs to figure out how to deal with a post war Russia where Ukraine is a failed state and Russia just continues to be Russia.

The best solution is a Green Energy initiative on the scale of the Marshall Plan that removes the power of Russia's fossil fuel profiteering.

Olive branches are fine, too, but if one is offered to Putin, he'll simply light the end of it with a torch.