Readers write

Appeasement doesn’t work with dictators

I guess we ought to all be happy that President Trump did not give his Russian counterpart all of Ukraine as a remembrance of his visit to Alaska. I am hoping that a member of his staff will give the president a short history lesson on former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and appeasement. Appeasement did not work with Adolf Hitler, and it will not work with Vladimir Putin.

Another history lesson on appeasement ought to cover the 1997 Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, the Helsinki Final Act, the Budapest Memorandum, and the Minsk Agreements, all of which the Russians violated.

I know that the president is concerned about his image and would not want to be known as a modern-day Neville Chamberlain.

BILL ADAMS, DECATUR

Trump’s bromance with Putin must end

The one-sided bromance between Trump and Putin continues! I am so disappointed and disgusted at the sight of the president of the U.S. bowing to and appeasing this murderous dictator, and being played by him, that I hate watching the news. He has responded weakly and shamefully to the violent and unprovoked invasion and annexation of the home of the courageous Ukrainians.

Our allies and enemies are watching Trump’s vacillation and unfulfilled threats closely. They understand, as Trump apparently doesn’t, that Putin will only ever tolerate an independent Ukraine if forced to do so. They have also seen how dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Franco gained power and governed disastrously. Dictators are always driven by a desire for power and expansion.

World War II was triggered because Hitler thought he would not be opposed when he took territory from Czechoslovakia. If Russia is not stopped now, Putin will pick off the Baltic countries one by one, and we will eventually be dragged into war.