We must stop this war — NOW!

Ukraine is currently in a heckuva mess. Oh, I forgot — you all knew that before, didn’t you?

Vladimir Putin did what many believed he wouldn’t actually dare to do, and sent his more than 150,000 Russian Army troops across the border into eastern Ukraine, with the Russian Air Force pulling air raids over various of its cities, as well as other places. More than 2.7 million Ukrainians reportedly have fled their country in the face of this invasion, most of them going to Poland as refugees.

NOW, THE UKRAINIAN government and the country’s population have fought back in a way that amazed people all over the world. There’s no doubt about that; they have kicked the Russian Army’s asses good and hard, and in a number of locations, in their embattled country. Brings back memories of the thumping the Red Army got from the Finland warriors when they invaded the Scandinavian country in 1940.

But this can’t go on forever. The Ukrainians sooner or later will run out of ammunition, and missiles, and energy, and everything else.

And I think any of us who rely on Fox News for our information on this war, are being misled as to the Russian forces. We are being told that they are like a big, poorly trained state militia from the American Revolution, ignorant of military discipline and maneuvers, unable to resist any Ukrainian attacks, etc., etc. My advice is, take all that with a grain of salt. We’re talking about the second-largest army in the world, in the world’s largest country, square-miles-wise, which has been a dictatorship for as far back as anyone can remember. Those kind of countries don’t have weak armies.

But keep in mind that dictatorships also tend to have military leadership that, if the dictator appears to have everything all screwed up, then we may expect those “powers that be” to pull off a “coup de grace,” as they’d say in Paris, with the ruler winding up out of power and in prison, or possibly something worse.

I’M CERTAINLY NOT trying to play down the horrible things that the Russian invaders have done to the Ukrainians. Thousands dead, many more injured, cities blown to pieces by the Russian artillery, missiles, etc. Just when many of us thought, hoped, that Vladimir Putin was actually building some type of democracy in the former, and unlamented, Soviet Union. But, of course, it certainly isn’t the first time people who believe in democracy have been fooled by a clever, unscrupulous dictator. Can you say Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot? … and on and on and on.

But the latest bad news is, Putin has attacked a Ukrainian outpost just a few miles from the border with Poland. The attack left dozens dead, hundreds wounded — and a horrible “What if?” in the minds of millions. You see, Poland has been a member of NATO since after the fall of the Soviet Union. Drop so much as a hand grenade on the Poles, and Vladimir, you’ve got NATO to deal with. I could guarantee you don’t want THAT to happen. Ray Charles could see THAT.

AND THAT, with the reported agreement — of some kind — between Putin and the Communist Chinese, about SOMETHING, means that the time has come that SOMETHING has to be done about this disastrous situation. We can’t keep warning, and threatening, forever. Hopefully we can persuade Putin that his smartest, and least threatening, move, is to agree to some kind of compromise with the Ukrainians that will bring the fighting and killing to an end.

And if that can’t be achieved — well, that’s a big reason we have the world’s largest army. This has to be stopped, one way or the other. We sure as hell don’t need World War III.