To the editor:

Separation… boundaries… compartmentalization. In case you happened to wonder about all of the ways you can bend me, this is not one.

Let’s get specific. The borders of U.S. allies are NON-NEGOTIABLE.

Haven’t you ever heard of the saying, “You do not negotiate with terrorists”?

I know that I’m overly passionate and you probably think this clouds my outlook. But I assure you I can compensate with sobering facts. So how’s a cold hard glass of reality? The idea of territorial “settlement” is not compromise, it’s not realism, it’s not even real-politic — it’s just real pathetic.

Yet in an incredibly special way, the idea gets shoved down our throats thanks to men like top American journalist Tucker Carlson, Southwest Florida’s very own.

The Tucker-Putin interview revealed that the former KGB master of deception turned decades-long dictator is actually ready to negotiate Ukraine’s borders “with the U.S.”

Insults aside, one can not truly be that naive to believe the current Kremlin regime is actually interested in negotiations, when they outrightly refuse negotiation with the very country in which they invade.

First: Ukraine will not negotiate with Russia unless there is a complete withdrawal of Russia’s occupation from its territory.

Second: It’s not just about territory. Ukrainians will not abandon family and friends to live under the oppressive Russian regime, which killed their children, raped their women, and burned down 500 churches.

Third: Ukrainian soldiers came so far. My friend, Commander Yuri lost several soldiers in his brigade this week, and gained a POW. Ukrainians sacrificed too much and fought too hard to give in. To suggest “negotiation” now is not only callous and irrational, but one-sided.

Yet in a talk with world leaders in Dubai this week, Tucker Carlson reiterated “Putin is not going to be more open to negotiation as it goes on …..”

Guess they want us to hurry.

Assuming the ancient advice is correct and no country has ever benefited from prolonged warfare, if Putin realizes his mistake in invading Ukraine, then the demands for negotiation seem less quid like pro quo and more like desperation pulsing beneath the surface.

But if Putin actually thinks he can wait it out to get his demands, this is bolstered by those dare I say, useful idiots who anticipate the worst possible outcome.

While I understand we need to be prepared for the worst, if you want to “negotiate” an end to war, your starting point should not be your enemy’s demands.

We need to position ourselves for the most effective outcome possible. In the long run, men only hit what they aim at.

We can’t squander this opportunity to aim high.

The world thought Ukraine would fall in five days. Since then, Ukraine has decimated and exposed the Russian military for what it really is — incompetent, barbaric, nevertheless defeatable threat.

Ukraine has been incredibly effective with the aid we’ve given them, completely outperforming expectations by a landslide.

We underestimated them back then, and that resulted in the current U.S. admin slow-rolling tanks, missiles and heavy machinery that could have ended the war long ago.

It would be a big mistake to underestimate Ukraine again by rushing into “negotiations.”

I wonder if Charles Lindbergh ever gave second thought to why historical perspective is never justification to brutally invade other countries or rewrite international borders.

Indeed, the relevant historical template is not confined to World War II, so I’ve come up with a little more breadth.

The war in Ukraine is a continuation of the precedents we set in our post 9/11 intervention which, contrary to popular belief, did not begin with Iraq. It began in Eastern Europe, Georgia — also now occupied by Russia, where U.S. militants fought side-by-side Russia and further destabilized the now Russian-controlled Chechnyan republic.

But the “lord of bunker” forgot that part in his extended history lecture to Tucker Carlson.

From the U.S. perspective, “negotiation” defined in the sense that Ukraine should cede territory to Russia would ensure a repeat of the same mistakes we made in Afghanistan, where our botched pull-out resulted in tens of billions worth in U.S. military equipment falling into the hands of the Taliban, a state-sponsor of terrorism.

To that end, Trump appears adverse to this idea of “negotiation.” Recently he said of Ukraine aid, “Give them the money, and if they can pay it back, they pay it back. If they can’t pay it back they don’t have to pay it back … but if they go to another nation, they drop us like a dog. . . If that happens to our country, then very simply we call (in) the loan and we say we want our money, because we give money and then they go to the other side.”

In other words, we can lose all of our investment in Ukraine if they negotiate with the “other side”, Russia.

Trump’s views on foreign leverage align with philosophies of free-market capitalism, which we can have greater faith in than empty and vain memorandums, doctrines, or treaties-essentially, pieces of legal paper which are given too much credence and ultimately reneged by war mongers. Ukrainians know this too well.

These so-called “treaties” must first be backed with military power, hence why I advocate to send Ukraine our decommissioned weapons which are right now sitting on American soil collecting dust, costing American taxpayer dollars to maintain. I’m not even asking for increased weapons production — we can put a fraction of what we’ve already got into better use, and get an actual return on our investment in the future.

Unfortunately, public discourse is so starved of originality, yet so saturated by people who don’t understand the first thing about actual solutions let alone “negotiation.”

You have men like Congressman Byron Donalds, who on Dec. 12 stated to Piers Morgan on Fox, “Our responsibility right now is to hold the line and make sure our border is secure because Joe Biden is such a terrible leader he won’t even take care of things first here in America so if he won’t do that we have to force him to do that and unfortunately Ukraine is the leverage point to force him to do it.”

It is gross, literally disgusting, how Byron Donalds tried to attach Ukraine Aid to our own border, basically stating that we will not secure the border of the United States of America unless it is tied to a foreign war.

Byron Donalds is cut off and has avoided my calls to reallocate aid to Ukraine’s military. Like most of Congress, Donalds prefers to play around with politics, which explains why legislation has dragged on to February. An uncanny time in the political cycle to vote on Ukraine, is it not?

As always I’ll be the one to update you on the National Security bill, since our Congressman clearly has gone AWOL. As of now, the U.S. border and tons of things were thrown out, and funding for Ukrainians in the U.S. is cut from $2.3 billion to $480 million.

I have been left too long in this nightmare. Where to find the great American minds of our times, who know how to bring our enemies to their knees, eating out of the palm of our hand, who know how to make them RESPECT US.

I felt all of this needs to be articulated in detail, but it can be summed very quickly and to the point.

NO DEAL.

Alexandra

Zakhvatayev