Surrogate war against Russia costly, dangerous

Despite the national debt being out of control and constituting the largest threat to the country, Congress just agreed to send billions to Ukraine. Yes, Putin is a murderer, etc. but this war was the result of NATO moving ever closer to Russia despite an agreement not to do so after the Soviet Union fell.

The U.S. helped remove an existing government in Ukraine in 2014 and install a pro-western government with desires to join the EU and NATO. Then just prior to the war the U.S. and the UK convinced Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia. Amazingly our secretary of state just announced that post-war Ukraine will join NATO, which is madness.

So now we are in a surrogate war with Russia, which cannot be won and will only result in more thousands of dead Ukrainians, with the stated purpose being to weaken Russia. This is very dangerous, particularly in light of our mentally deficient president who could easily stumble and bumble his way into World war III. It is interesting that we daily hear calls for a cease-fire in Gaza but never in Ukraine.

In the end, Russia will take over the two Russian-speaking sections of Ukraine or the entire country. We should have pushed for negotiations rather than send more weapons to prolong the war.

Lastly, the best way to weaken Russia, whose main export is energy, would have been to expand drilling on federal lands but our leader chose otherwise. Instead, he foolishly chose to deplete our Strategic Oil Reserve for political reasons down to an 18-day supply, lowest in history. Remember that this is the same Reserve that Trump wanted to fill at about $35/barrel, but which Biden will not fill due the high price of oil.

Stefanie O'Reilly

Wheaton