Biden administration officials are suggesting America will press Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy to eastern Ukrainian lands now controlled by Russia-backed separatists, who rose up against Kiev in 2014, the Associated Press reported today. This idea was laid out in the highly ambiguous Minsk Agreement that was brokered in 2015 after Russia annexed Crimea, but it never was enforced.

Also, the AP is reporting that senior State Department officials have told Ukraine that NATO membership is unlikely to be approved in the next decade. In other words, President Putin gets what he wants. Namely, no NATO for Ukraine, and he can take over the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine any old time he wants.

If this is true, it is a bad move that smacks up and down of weakness and appeasement by America.

It’s also the exact opposite of what the national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told us only a couple days ago: “I will look you in the eye and tell you, as President Biden looked Putin in the eye and told him today, that things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now.”

Actually, if the AP is right, I would rephrase that by saying we are prepared to repeat what Obama-Biden did in 2014, which was give up Crimea without a whimper. Now, though, it’s looking like President Biden is going to stand by while Mr. Putin takes all of Ukraine.

Last night, Senator Graham told me a very good idea. Based on Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine, he said the U.S. right now should impose tough sanctions covering the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, banking, raw materials, and Mr. Putin’s oligarchic inner circle. If Russia stands down, we can take down the sanctions.

“We should impose sanctions on Russia today based on the military buildup,” he said. “The military buildup is provocative, it’s threatened the territorial integrity of the Ukraine, which throws the whole world into chaos. So why don’t we do sanctions against the buildup and if they stand down, we’ll take the sanctions down.”

Again, it seems evident Mr. Biden is prepared to give up Ukraine and its dream of joining NATO, under which it would ally with the Western democracies and their free market economies. This would be a disastrous course for America, and it comes on the heels of the catastrophe in Afghanistan. The U.S. lost so much credibility around the world that it prompted Russia to go after Ukraine again, and China to go after Taiwan.

Following all of the U.S. rhetoric from Messrs. Sullivan and Biden and State Secretary Blinken after the Putin meeting, it sounds like we’re actually just folding our tent and going away.

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From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.