Families of US Embassy personnel in Ukraine ordered to begin evacuating Monday

[Walt]

PSAKI: And we’ve said from the beginning that there are certain proposals that will not be viable.

We absolutely cannot rule out NATO expansion. I agree strongly with Biden's strong stance here.

Unfortunately, we can also not expand to Ukraine. They are already invaded partially by Russia, so allowing them to be members right now would mean we would be at war with Russia. We could get Finland and Sweden as members, but not Ukraine.

That leaves us in the in-between position of not accepting Ukraine as a member, but also not rejecting them. It is not a good position, but it is the best position available to us at the moment. Thankfully, trump is not in office to take a worse position.

What we must concentrate on is making Ukraine indigestible to Putin. Putin can invade Ukraine, but it will cost him a lot to try to hold it. Hopefully, he will be convinced to backdown because of that. Either way, I see no benefit to us keeping a lot of civilians in Ukraine.

As a side note, it is difficult to not put "the" in front of Ukraine, but I am trying to train myself to do it. "The Ukraine" is a region, where Ukraine is an independent country.