Nicolas J.S. Davies

"It's time to stop this mass destruction," said Congolese Foreign Minister Jean-Claude Gakosso this week. "It's time to stop this war."

Further escalation should be unthinkable, but so should a long war of endless crushing artillery barrages and brutal urban and trench warfare that slowly and agonizingly destroys Ukraine.

Instead of exploiting this crisis to expand even further, NATO should suspend all new or pending membership applications until the current crisis has been resolved.

Decisions by the U.S. will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war.

While Western leaders are demanding that Russia be held accountable for war crimes, they have raised no such clamor to prosecute U.S. officials.

A top priority must be to dismantle the nuclear Doomsday machine we have inadvertently collaborated to build and maintain for 70 years, along with the obsolete and dangerous NATO military alliance.

The troubling history and dangerous U.S. relationship with the Azov Battalion and other extreme right-wing groups in Ukraine cannot be forgotten.

Nothing justifies the Russian invasion, but there is a more insidious reality at work beneath the surface of this classic morality play.