‘We’re Fucked’: Vladimir Putin’s ‘Great’ Russia Plan Just Went Up in Smoke in Lyman

It would require a statesman to to figure a way out of this mess. Regrettably I have seen none since Reagan. The situation we now face is the clear result of a weak and feckless foreign policy.
I suspect that we need to push Ukraine back to the negotiating table. Around March they and the Russians had a peace framework that would have left Ukraine intact and Russia seemed to have agreed to pulled back to a pre-2014 border. Please note that I trust no one and especially not one of our four principle enemies. However, it was a start by anyone's standard's. The only thing hanging that up was a guarantee that Ukraine would never become part of NATO. In all honesty and under normal circumstances, Ukraine would never have been admitted to NATO. Whoever is making the decisions in DC doesn't seem to want that war to be peacefully ended and also demands regime change in the RF.
Communist China is the greatest single threat to the United States (at least the Pre-Covid US). We need to be prepared to counter PRC aggression on Taiwan and throughout the South China Sea. Ukraine is a massive distraction from policies in the best interest of the US.

CPT (Join to see) Six months ago I would have agreed on Communist China but their military is patterned on the Soviet/Russian model. They may have bright shiny new stuff, but do they know how to use and support it?

I tend to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Threatening NATO of course.

I've advocated returning our nuclear bombers to alert for several months now. They held the Soviets at bay for decades and can certainly do the same for the depleted Russian forces.