Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said Sunday that the United States needs to accept that Ukraine will likely need to “cede some territory” to Russia to end the fighting. Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that he is opposed to sending more aid to Ukraine because he does not believe the country will ever be able to overpower Russia. He questioned why sending billions in aid to Ukraine is going to help the country at this point in its war against Russia, considering previous aid has yet to end the war. “What’s in America’s best interest is to accept Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians, and we need to bring this war to a close,” Vance said. “But when I think about the great human tragedy here, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans innocent have been killed in this conflict. The thing that’s in our interest and in theirs is to stop the killing.”
The one sure way to end the fighting is to fund Ukraine’s defense. When the right defunded Ukraine’s defense, they didn’t do it to promote peace, they did it to advance the interests of their allies (that is, Putin).
The reality of ‘ending the fighting’ is going to mean the violence will continue in the territory Russia controls, even after the ‘hostilities’ as such are ended. When Russia gains some territory, the russification of that territory involves punishing the people there for not having surrendered more quickly, liquidating institutions of local culture and replacing them with Russian ones, the separation of families, the internal displacement of locals on trips to the far east that many won’t survive, the ‘political reeducation’ camps, etc.
When US politicians try to pass off enabling a certain genocide as an ‘end to hostilities’ or in anodyne terms like ‘cede some territory’, don’t let them do it. They’re not acquiescing to the inevitable, they’re actively partnering in genocide.