Prior to the war I would have agreed. Give in to Putin's demands to keep Russian neighbors out of NATO and accept the secession of the Donbass republics. It doesn't need to be diplomatically recognized and everyone knew the final goal was to annex them into the Russian Federation. I would have thought that everything would stop there.

But the war has now made too clear that Putin is basically upping his bet and that he cares little for consequences. That he won't stop at Kyiv. So appeasing now means that something else will be the trouble tomorrow.

That said it is also clear to me that the West doesn't know what to do. On the one hand they want to reassure the Ukraine and others that they stand by them but on the other they aren't willing to risk too much. The banking sanctions affect the world economy, for instance, but they know direct military assistance (rather than just handing out some weaponry, and cyber warfare) risks Russian retaliation against more than just the Ukraine.