>This isn't "let's hear both sides" it's "this will get really nasty if we pull the old so-i-started-blasting strategy."
It already is really nasty. Ask the people of Bucha. I think my overall point here is that the war has already begun, and we in the West are sticking our heads in the sand and praying for it to go away. History shows that evil men will stop at nothing short of a forced hand. And any talk of negotiation with Russia at this point sounds painfully like "peace in our time". There is no "choice" to avoid this conflict anymore. I wish to god that there was. But that choice was made 20 years ago when Ukraine was alienated from NATO. Our only option now is to accept the reality of our state of war with Russia, or to sit by and watch them win.
Okay. How do you get the two sides to come to an agreement? Right now, one side wants the other side to not exist [1], the other side appears to be willing to concede status quo ante bellum.
[1] To be more precise, they have given several conflicting answers as to what they actually want. I personally find this answer to be the most likely to be true, especially given that the other side is willing to agree to the demands implied by several of the other answers, and yet this side is unwilling to accept such agreement.
Negotiation isn't a way out against an aggressor who isn't convinced that you can and will use force otherwise.
What you have then is at best surrender to their current demands and hope they don't decide to see what they can take you for next after that. This isn’t novel territory.
>So you want boots on the ground? Whose? Yours? Your children's?
Boots are already on the ground. Ukrainians childrens boots. They are already fighting the largest land battle in european history since World War II at this very moment. Russia has already taken greater losses than Germany did with the invasion of Poland.
Ukraine's fate is our own. And the longer we pretend this is just another foreign conflict, the more danger we will be in.
It already is really nasty. Ask the people of Bucha. I think my overall point here is that the war has already begun, and we in the West are sticking our heads in the sand and praying for it to go away. History shows that evil men will stop at nothing short of a forced hand. And any talk of negotiation with Russia at this point sounds painfully like "peace in our time". There is no "choice" to avoid this conflict anymore. I wish to god that there was. But that choice was made 20 years ago when Ukraine was alienated from NATO. Our only option now is to accept the reality of our state of war with Russia, or to sit by and watch them win.