General Discussion

Without him, I can't imagine that Ukraine would have withstood the initial onslaught until they got to the point that, with Western partners, were able to start not just holding their own, but fighting back.

Without that resistance, Putin may have conquered the region, then moved onto Step 2 of the master plan that some analysts have predicted as his end game - moving to take the access points that they once held, during the Soviet era. The rationale behind that isn't hard to find - Russia has suffered through 50 large-scale invasions in their history, and all have come through the 9 gaps in the natural defences - mountain ranges, etc. On the Eastern side of those defences lies open plains, absolutely ideal for massive ground assault led by armour.

All of the remaining points of contention (from Russia's pov) are either in or accessed through NATO countries.

Article 5 of NATO's founding documents calls for ALL NATO countries to respond to aggression against any other member. Seeing what a small country that had to build its military on the fly with essentially handouts has managed against what turned out to be a Russian paper tiger, it is not at all hard to imagine the devastation even one of the major NATO countries could do to them, let alone with all the European compatriots fighting with them. With or without the US (but especially with, obviously), it would be a bloodbath leading to the inevitable "Do we launch, or accept the thrashing we've received and go home to live a shortened national existence in shame and irrelevance?"

He is a KEY component in hopefully averting nuclear war.

I apologize if you knew all or even much of this beforehand - I didn't mean to lecture. I've been following this pretty closely (although now quite sidetracked since the first week in January, obviously) and stopping Russia in Ukraine while rendering their armed forces moot as a global player is near and dear to me.