I wish there was a way out of this, but it seems akin to the Israeli-Palestine conflict almost. One of those things which will just be there forever.

Unlike Biden, I don't really think Putin will invade. Russians have a history of playing hardball without actually taking the final step.

It is sable rattling. But who knows, conflicts have spiral out of control in the past.

Personally I would really not want the Ukraine in either NATO or the EU. A large NATO is a security liability in my humble opinion. I already find it highly problematic that Turkey which is turning into an autocracy is in NATO. What if they end up in some middle Eastern war. They almost got into a military conflict with Russia over Syria. That would have risked pulling the rest of us into a large scale war with Russia.

A larger alliance has more points of failure. More countries which could go wrong or provoke a war somewhere.

The EU in my opinion should not take any more members before the whole political structure is reformed. It already deadlocks too easily with all its members. It has shown itself completely ineffectual in dealing with autocracy developing in Hungary and Poland.

Also the Ukraine is just far too poor. It is akin to a third world country. The free flow of people between Eastern European countries and the Western European ones has already created a lot of problems, and those countries are far more developed than the Ukraine.

For the EU to work countries cannot be at too different levels of development.