Agree with the message of the article, but not for the reasons mentioned.

The Russian-Ukrainian war is a local squabble and none of the West's business.

I sympathize with the Ukrainians holding out against the imperialist Russian aggressors, but not in a million years should the Western (or more specifically American) soldiers be sent to fight to help save some Slavs from other Slavs in a country they wouldn't be able to find on a map.

Not a single dead U.S. soldier or even an expensive missile fired is worth whatever these Slavs are trying to settle between themselves.

Moscow’s interests in Ukraine are effectively existential. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s leaders came to believe that the eastward expansion of NATO posed a serious security threat to the Russian state.

And so, when it seemed as if that warning would not be heeded and Ukraine might enter into an Association Agreement with the EU, Russia struck out, first invading Crimea in 2014 then intervening in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Moscow’s goal both times was nothing more or less than preventing Ukraine from falling further into the Western orbit or, failing that, to carve out a buffer zone along Russia’s western frontier.

Ukraine is a sovereign state and has (or at least should have) freedom to do as it sees fit.

Ukrainian people, just like Russian people, are both Eastern Slavs as well.

And what did Russia do to their fellow Slavs when they took a political turn the Russians didn't like?

They simply invaded their country and grabbed a portion of their land.

How very noble of the Russians.

As the author notes anyway, a full-blown war between the West and them is impossible just because these guys have nuclear missiles.

So incorporating Ukraine into NATO would pose little security threat to Russia because any attempt to invade it would result in nuclear holocaust.

And this is a risk no Western country would ever take.

That leaves the military costs.

The Russian military is a well-equipped, experienced combat force with a proven ability to fight conventional and hybrid wars. No one doubts that, at a minimum, it could inflict substantial casualties on the U.S military should it enter the conflict. It might even emerge victorious.

The only thing that 'no one doubts' is that the idiot who wrote this piece of horseshit has no clue of the combat capabilities of Russian and American militaries.

The U.S. military is the most effective fighting force in the world.

Its level of personnel training, technology, leadership and experience in fighting both conventional and counter-insurgency wars is unmatched by any other power out there.

The Americans are simply on an entirely different level compared to the rest of the world as far as military is concerned.

Russians, on the other hand, field shitty poorly-trained conscripts, drunk incompetent officers and much of their miltiary hardware is comprised of Soviet-era rusty shit like T-72 tanks and Mi-24 helicopters.

Think I'm exaggerating and underestimating the Russians?

Take a look at their military perfomance in the 2014 Russian-Ukrainian war, the very one this article is discussing.

The Russians suffered extremely heavy casualties, lost hundreds of troops and dozens of tanks in a span of a few days, and were forced to retreat with a tail between their legs, failing to achieve their goal of driving off the Ukrainian troops from the Eastern regions of the country.

Keep in mind that the Ukrainian army they were fighting was easily one of the weakest and poorly-funded militaries in Europe, and the Russians still took such heavy blows from them.

As I have noted above, a conventional war with Russia is impossible, but if it somehow, hypothetically, happened, the U.S. military would trounce them like worms.