I see a lot of opinions here that seem to want to a) blame the current administration, b) blame NATO for the current threat of war. That's like blaming the victim in an abusive relationship as nobody in the west wants war. What these opinions miss are the following relevant facts: 1. NATO has consistently pushed back on Ukraine's interest in joining NATO for fear of the geopolitical impacts, specifically Russia. 2. Ukraine has become steadily more European and less Russian in the last decade, and has slowly been falling away from Russia, both culturally and economically. This is Putin's last-ditch attempt to keep Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence. It is destined to fail, because the Ukrainian people have started to move on, although there is a very large, aging contingent of former Soviet, pro-Russia people who don't like what has been happening from a cultural standpoint. However the best way to tell where a country is going is to ask the youth. They often speak English and would prefer to be a modern democracy. We in the US at least should continue to do what we've done for 70 years and work for democracy with all the tools at our reasonable disposal. The world largely moving to democracy did not happen by accident.