Opinion: Letters: The Ukraine War: Negotiate or Fight?

To the Editor:

Re “I’m Ukraine’s Foreign Minister. Putin Must Be Stopped,” by Dmytro Kuleba (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, July 29):

The government of Ukraine urges us not to negotiate, but to fight. This is a recipe for the destruction of Ukraine and the possible escalation to a nuclear war.

From the start, the United States has refused to acknowledge a critical and valid issue for negotiation with Russia: NATO’s planned enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia, a bad and provocative idea launched by the U.S. in 2008.

We should instead follow John F. Kennedy’s enduring wisdom: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs
New York
The writer is a university professor at Columbia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/opinion/letters/russia-ukraine-war.html