I want to be clear. What is happening in the Ukraine is awful and Putin is a monster. Don't ever think I hold a different view than those, but those are easy things to say in February of 2022, and to be frank they should go without saying. How do you reason with him? Well, the current CIA director told Washington in 08 what to do. They ignored him, and here we are. We might now be at the point of no return, and only time will tell. The important part is to learn from our mistakes, but we seem extremely uninclined to want to do that.I think we’re seeing the vast majority of people asking for a peaceful resolution. Surely civilians living in and around Russia/Ukraine don’t want an escalation for obvious reasons. Problem is Putin seems to not give any fucks so how to you reason with an unreasonable man? I mean he’s a habitual line stepper. This recent dialog about a broken promise is very important as that’s been his foot in the door to invade. And this mincing of words is ridiculous. Nobody made any promise in the context of NATO expanding east outside the GDR topic. So to use some vague “assurance” as a justification for war is about as disingenuous as saying Putin isn’t invading he’s just doing a “special military operation”.