And pass the ammunition - P.S.

My friend Hasi just sent me a message reminding me that my goal of getting Putin to the negotiating table was not meaningful. It's not that we're "negotiating" how much of Ukraine Putin gets to keep; the Ukrainian starting position is pretty much, "Stop the killing. Stop the destruction of our cities and get out of our country - now!"

Ukraine is not going to want to say you can keep the Dombass and the Crimea. It's going to say "You invaded us back in 2014 and we didn't get any help from our European or American friends to kick your ass back to Moscow.  But now you've shown just what a rotten bastard you are and the world has begun to take notice and help us out." Ukraine is not really in a mood to negotiate, in other words. To pretend they are is not an honest place to start.

Putin is even less willing to negotiate. He wants it all and he has shown he'd rather burn the place to the ground and kill every last Ukrainian if he has to to get his way. He wants the entire territory to be part of Russia, he wants Ukrainians to call themselves Russians, and he wants the name "Ukraine" to disappear from history. He has said as much. If he were to negotiate, he might be willing to go as far as to allow Ukraine to be used as a name for the region where the cities of Kiev and Lviv and Odessa and Mariupol and Kharkov are located. Maybe Lviv can go back to being Lvov.

So we're not really talking about a negotiation; we're talking about an armistice. A cease-fire as a first step only to total independence from Russian occupation. What Ukraine wants is for Russians to stop killing Ukrainians. And that's the reason why they want Germany and other friends to send them heavy weapons: so that they can bring home to Putin the realization that he has no other option but to lay down his weapons and withdraw from the borders of Ukraine. That's the goal. Nothing short of that will do.

Whether the Ukrainians will ultimately be willing to surrender part of their territory is one question, and whether that will satisfy Putin is another. At present there appears to be no basis to even start the negotiation I was talking about and the answer to both questions appears to be no.

If that's where the "negotiations" end up, with a carving up of Ukraine, there will likely be endless killing, endless insurrection as far into the future as anybody can see. Putin has only succeeded in bringing out a Ukrainian national consciousness that seems at the moment to be unbreakable. Putin might win this battle, but he has lost his war.

Forgive me for my lack of clarity on the subject.

Like many people, I'm learning as I go...