The money that the United States is directing to Ukraine, about $40 billion, to destroy the economy and deplete the military of Russia is the best bargain in the history of U.S. military spending. And all it costs us is about 5% of our annual military spending (about $750 billion). No boots on the ground, very little danger to any troops.

I agree. The Republican Party I was a member of a couple of decades ago wouldn't have thought twice was funding Ukraine in opposition of a Russian dictator. Oh, how far they have fallen...

Russia is tanking their economy, wasting their military (estimates of at least 50K dead, plus the loss of high-value assets such as their equivalent of AWACS, several ships in their fleet including their flagship, armor, HIMARS, pretty much all of their first-tier hardware**, etc), and just generally weakening themselves.

A lot of what we are sending is mothballed hardware. We've already spent the money to build that hardware. Older generations of M1 Abrams, stockpiles of artillery (and the -generally- older model barrels to shoot it), etc. So we aren't really spending any new money, at least not for that stuff. It's just moving numbers from one column to another on a spreadsheet.

Oh...Quibble...

Russia can stop (for now) Ukraine from joining NATO because, I believe, NATO has a policy of not accepting new members who are in active combat/war. Otherwise NATO would get dragged-in immediately. As long as Putin has his war, Ukraine can't join. Ironically, Ukraine was very much split over the issue before Putin invaded, and likely wouldn't have had to votes to approve application for NATO membership. Today, a LOT of Ukrainians would like to join NATO.

If Russia had any intention of coming to the negotiating table, it would have done so months ago. Russia is waiting for republicans to kill funding and it looks like most republicans are pro-Russia (which is why Russians were celebrating today on state television).

Conjecture, but it makes sense. Putin really can't come to the negotiating table because then he loses. He loses at home with "the people". He looks weak, the public will wonder why their family members had to die when nothing was achieved, Ukraine will not have been "denazified", etc. This -like Afghanistan for the Soviets- is Putin's Vietnam. He really can't win militarily, or politically. And the more he digs this hole, the harder it's going to be to get out of it. I said a year ago that he should just cut his losses and leave. It would have been bad for him, but it would be worse for him if he did it today.

Also, even if the US stopped funding, a LOT of European countries won't. Several nations have sent most of their stockpiles to Ukraine (and are increasing their military spending) because as long as Russia is involved in Ukraine, they aren't invading their nations (e.g. Poland, Lithuania, etc). The fear among those nations is that if Putin wins in Ukraine, they'll be next.

**Satellite images show that they are raiding their boneyards for hardware that was obsolete 40 years ago...they've burned through most of their latest T90s, and have been scrounging their boneyards for T72s and even T62s. The T62 is Vietnam era.