Editor’s Note: The following letter was received by the Institute from Dr. Michael K. Launer, Emeritus Professor of Russian at Florida State University and is published with his permission.

This is a brief response to Ted Snider’s September 8, 2026 article, “All That’s Wrong in Ukraine.”

The editorial guidelines of the Libertarian Institute require that submissions be kept “on subject.” Snider’s article correctly detailing Ukraine’s desperate demographic situation goes “off the rails” in the last paragraph. He states:

“The war in Ukraine might have been prevented if the United States and NATO had taken Russia’s security concerns seriously and sincerely negotiated Russia’s December 2021 Security proposals.”

Has he read Russia’s December 2021 security proposals? That seems unlikely. Among other things, they call for the United States to guarantee that Ukraine will never be admitted into NATO. In addition, NATO would be required to rescind the membership of all former Warsaw Pact nations (plus the Baltic states) and to remove all of its forces and facilities from Eastern Europe.

Without explicitly rejecting the more strident demands, the United States actually responded to some of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s less outrageous proposals, but Lavrov made clear in a nationally televised meeting of the Russian Security Council on February 21, 2022—just three days before the full-scale attack on Ukraine was initiated—that the package sent to the West was a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal which was entirely non-negotiable:

“In the proposals we have received, the United States and NATO are also suggesting efforts in certain aspects of reducing military risks and on increasing transparency and predictability. These ideas are very close to the proposals we have repeatedly presented to both the Americans and to NATO. However, these issues were removed, separated from the context of the package agreement on security guarantees.”

And in the original Cyrillic:

“Среди других идей, которые США и НАТО передали нам, это работа по некоторым аспектам уменьшения военных рисков, повышению транспарентности и предсказуемости. Они на самом деле близки к нашим предложениям, которые мы неоднократно выдвигали в последние годы как перед американцами, так и перед натовцами. Но эти темы вырваны, выведены из контекста пакетного соглашения по гарантиям безопасности.”

Russian leaders knew in advance that the proposals were never going to be accepted by the West. Nor was that their intention. All they were looking for was some sort of justification in the eyes of the domestic audience for the war that was looming.

A full discussion of this event is available in chapter fourteen of a 2025 book I coauthored and published by Academic Studies Press, The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse – Volume Four: The Demise of “Democracy” after Putin’s Return to Power.

Editor’s Note: Ted Snider, a regular contributor at the Libertarian Institute, was given the opportunity to respond to Dr. Launer, which is published below.

First, I would like to thank Dr. Launer for his thoughtful comments.

I am very pleased that, in a long article about Ukraine’s demographic, military, and corruption challenges, he does not think I went “off the rails” until the final paragraph.

Dr. Launer is correct to point out the complexity of an international security architecture in which the sides’ demands had become incompatible and maximalist. Athough, it is not entirely clear that the text of Article 4 of Russia’s 2021 security proposal demands rescinding NATO membership from several nations, as he states, but rather the more limited demand that NATO “shall not deploy military forces and weaponry” on their territory, consistent with promises made in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. His objection is the familiar one: that NATO expansion to Ukraine was not a real security concern for Russia nor a real cause of the war but that it was used as a justification for the invasion.

But the historical record is clear both that Russian President Vladimir Putin is only the latest in a line of Russian officials to draw the brightest of red lines at Ukraine being in NATO and NATO being in Ukraine, and that a host of the most knowledgeable American officials knew about that red line and warned against crossing it.

Most pertinently, Jens Stoltenberg, who was then-NATO Secretary General, said that in 2021, prior to the war, Putin “sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.” Stoltenberg continued:

“He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO…We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

NATO and the United States knew, in the weeks before the war, that NATO enlargement to Ukraine was the red line that, if crossed, led to war. Members of the Ukrainian negotiating team continued to know, in the first weeks after the war started, that an assurance that Ukraine would not join NATO was the “key point” for Russia and that “Everything else was simply rhetoric and political ‘seasoning.’” According to Davyd Arakhamiia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team in the Belarus and Istanbul talks, Russia was “prepared to end the war if we agreed to, as Finland once did, neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.”

Nonetheless, Derek Chollet, counselor to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has disclosed that Washington told Moscow that negotiating NATO expansion into Ukraine was never even on the table.

Dr. Launer is correct that the American response to Russia’s security proposal included some significant military concessions. But his insistence that the Russian rejection was a “’take it or leave it’ proposal” is unfair and unfounded. The part that Moscow was told was “never on the table” was the “key point” that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine.

Dr. Launer closes by saying that Russia’s security proposals were a ruse, that their intention was never to negotiate avoiding the war, and that they were just looking for a justification to invade Ukraine. There is an industry of analysts who claim to know the mind and intentions of Vladimir Putin. But there is nothing in Putin’s speeches, in Russia’s list of root causes of the war or in the historical record that indicates that Putin coveted Donbas or sought war with Ukraine.

Putin did not annex Donbas in 2014 when he had the opportunity, the mandate, and the means. He discouraged autonomy referenda in Donbas in 2014 and did not accept their positive vote. He remained committed to the Minsk Accords, which would grant Donbas a degree of autonomy within a federalist Ukraine but not independence or union with Russia. The Russian parliament rescinded Putin’s temporary authority to use troops in Ukraine in June 2015 following the annexation of Crimea. When a draft agreement between Ukraine and Russia had been initialed, Putin halted his assault and withdrew Russian forces from Kiev, rather than move further into Ukraine. Most indicatively, Putin opened negotiations and agreed to end the war with restrained or no additional acquisition of territory in the first weeks of the war when core goals were met.

Ukraine is experiencing demographic, military, and economic collapse. There were opportunities to explore peace immediately before and after the start of the war. The United States rejected Russia’s core demand—a written guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO—that could have prevented war and pushed Ukraine off the path of diplomacy that could have quickly ended it.