Nowhere did I suggest this, and Matlock does not even imply it in his essay. I was pretty clear that the problem I have with this discussion at this point. To put it bluntly: we will get nowhere with diplomacy if our line continues to be "your concerns are fake and made up, so do what we tell you". That's the attitude I see in here, in MSM, and from politicians (mostly in the US). Russia needs to be punished for what they're doing, but I want to see an end to these conflicts. The greatest geopolitical blunder since the end of WWII is the utter failure of the West to come to terms with and reintegrate Russia into a joint-security sphere after the fall of communism and Soviet Union. It's bigger than the Iraq War even, since Russia actually does have nukes.
>...it's a matter of the wishes of the Ukrainian people who have wanted independence from Russia for centuries
Some of these people in Ukraine are hardcore neo-Nazis, and we are giving them weapons. Some a genuine I'm sure, and I haven't been to Ukraine, and only have a few friends from there. So it's hard for me to gauge exactly how genuine any of this is given how toxic coverage of anything even tangentially related to Russia is in the West.
