Putin acts, the West talks...

Putin acts, the West talks...  And the West isn't even talking very persuasively.

I don't know enough about the situation in Ukraine to even propose a solution.  However, it does seem clear that just standing around yakking while Putin grabs territory in Europe is a very bad idea.  Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of history will note the parallels to events in Europe just 90 years ago, when Adolf Hitler started occupying European countries on the slimmest of manufactured pretexts.  That didn't end well, and neither will allowing Putin free reign.

The current context is more complex than the situation with Hitler.  In today's globally-connected economy, there are more tools available with which to pressure Russia – but the inverse is also true.  Russia supplies about 25% of Europe's energy, and that's a pretty big stick with which to prod the Europeans.  Then there's that other little inconvenient fact: that Russia is sitting on (numerically) the world's largest collection of nuclear weapons.  This fact colors the consideration of every possible military response.

I don't have answers, but I can look at the current response and say with confidence: it seems very unlikely that this leads to a good outcome...