To those of you who feel that because Putin is evil, we should never negotiate with him, that to negotiate with him is to reward him for his evil acts, I ask you this: Would you have advised John Kennedy not to negotiate with Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because that would have rewarded Khrushchev for his evil act of placing missiles in Cuba? Fortunately, professional diplomats understand that words like “good” and “evil” have no place in successful diplomacy. And JFK ultimately “rewarded” Khrushchev by removing our missiles from Turkey. Unfortunately, Joe Biden is no JFK. And our current administration is apparently more influenced by the same neocons who have been luring us into military defeats since the Vietnam War, than it is by skilled diplomats. Calling Putin a “thug”, as Biden has done, and likening him to Hitler serves only one purpose, and that is to justify war. Not negotiating with Putin guarantees the continued suffering of the Ukrainian people. Since weakening Russia is the official US policy goal in the Ukraine War, apparently saving Ukrainians from further suffering has a lower priority. Here Professor Stephen Cohen explains it best:

Who Putin Is Not

Falsely demonizing Russia’s leader has made the new Cold War even more dangerous.

The specter of an evil-doing Vladimir Putin has loomed over and undermined US thinking about Russia for at least a decade. Henry Kissinger deserves credit for having warned, perhaps alone among prominent American political figures, against this badly distorted image of Russia’s leader since 2000: “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy. It is an alibi for not having one.”

[…]

“Political scientists generally agree that Putin has been a “soft authoritarian” leader governing a system that has authoritarian and democratic components inherited from the past. They disagree as to how to specify, define, and balance these elements, but most would also generally agree with a brief Facebook post, on September 7, 2018, by the eminent diplomat-scholar Jack Matlock: “Putin…is not the absolute dictator some have pictured him. ”

[…]

“Putin clearly understands that millions of Russians have and often express pro-Stalin sentiments. Nonetheless, his role in these still-ongoing controversies over the despot’s historical reputation has been, in one unprecedented way, that of an anti-Stalinist leader. Briefly illustrated, if Putin reveres the memory of Stalin, why did his personal support finally make possible two memorials (the excellent State Museum of the History of the Gulag and the highly evocative “Wall of Grief”) to the tyrant’s millions of victims, both in central Moscow? The latter memorial monument was first proposed by then–Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev, in 1961. It was not built under any of his successors—until Putin, in 2017.”

[…]

“Putin has adopted a number of “anti-corruption” policies over the years. How successful they have been is the subject of legitimate debate. As are how much power he has had to rein in fully both Yeltsin’s oligarchs and his own, and how sincere he has been. But branding Putin “a kleptocrat” also lacks context and is little more than barely informed demonizing.

“A recent scholarly book finds, for example, that while they may be “corrupt,” Putin “and the liberal technocratic economic team on which he relies have also skillfully managed Russia’s economic fortunes.” A former IMF director goes further, concluding that Putin’s current economic team does not “tolerate corruption” and that “Russia now ranks 35th out of 190 in the World Bank’s Doing Business ratings. It was at 124 in 2010.”

READ THE LATE PROFESSOR COHEN’S FULL ARTICLE HERE:
“Who Putin Is Not“