DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: Because of the US president’s recent remarks, it is likely that this conflict will drag on.

The news out of Russia that Moscow was ordering its forces in Ukraine to refocus its efforts on pacifying the Russian-speaking eastern portions of Ukraine that Russia had enjoyed nominal control over since the 2014 annexation of Crimea indicated to many that Putin was looking for an off-ramp.

There was, however small, a light at the end of this particularly dark geopolitical tunnel that did not involve a possible mushroom cloud.

Even Ukraine’s gallant leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, had in effect approved the potentiality of a diplomatic solution with Putin that involved the ceding of eastern Ukraine to Russia, the acknowledgement that Crimea was now Russian territory, and the acceptance that Ukraine – if it at all wanted to be left in peace – would not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But:

It is not that hard to believe that President Biden does, in fact, support deploying American troops into Ukraine or that he wants to overthrow the Putin regime as the United States did to Saddam Hussein’s or Muammar Gaddafi’s regimes (and attempted to do to Bashar al-Assad’s government).

The greater question one must ask is: Why? Why on Earth would Biden wade into this geopolitical crisis that could go nuclear at any moment at a time when both the Ukrainian government and the Russian government appeared to be taking de-escalatory steps? And why hasn’t Biden come out immediately to correct the record, if he did indeed misspeak?

Yours Truly, last week:

Vladimir Putin has been informed reliably by the Western alliance that his exit — which in his case possibly includes a firing squad — is the price for peace.

Instead of building Putin a golden bridge to peace, Biden has backed him into a corner and dared him to lash out.

That’s the idiot’s way to start World War III, but from Joe Biden, what else did you expect?

And all that was before Biden’s disastrous ad-libs in Poland on Friday.