When fist met paper in Ukraine

File this under “News stories that should surprise no one”: Fighting continues in Ukraine despite a Western-brokered “ceasefire.” It’s the familiar pattern when a group of people who piously insist that a conflict can have no military solution sit down with the guys imposing one. First the nice guys sign a humiliatingly one-sided deal that places specific, unreasonable requirements on their ally who is getting pummeled in return for nebulous and unenforceable obligations on the people doing the pummeling.

Then the appeasers take the deal as proof that the bad guys never really meant it, it was all a misunderstanding and there is no military solution. But the bad guys take it as proof that the military solution is working brilliantly, not just gaining ground but causing the clueless weaklings opposite to grovel.

Then the aggression continues.

When you put your face under a bully’s foot, he steps on it. It should surprise no one.