[I’m sleep-deprived so this is not well written and fairly repetitive and unstructured, apologies. I also know nothing about politics and usually follow a policy of almost never reading the news. So me writing a comment on a complex geopolitical issue is arguably ludicrous.]

I see your reasoning with these points, and agree that the sign of donating is unclear, but I also think there are counterarguments to the points you have made.

I think that effectively giving in to Putin’s threats here plausibly emboldens him and other malevolent autocrats to take over more countries in the future with impunity. Instead, perhaps the more effective approach, and the one that might have better results in the long run, might be what the West is currently doing: forming a coalition that enforces punishments on malevolent autocrats invading other countries, etc. (I do think that the US invading e.g. Iraq is sufficiently dissimilar from the current case, though I know many people disagree on this.)

(Perhaps one might think that Putin is not a malevolent autocrat. Again, I think this seems likely but I don’t provide evidence here.)

If the West does not do this, it might become clear to Putin and others that they should invade neighboring countries (e.g., China taking over Taiwan) given that there are large material incentives to doing so, and that they will not face much resistance.

Therefore, if the West does not stand up strongly to Putin now, the result might be more violence and lives lost in the long run. Also, the historic track record of appeasement when it comes to malevolent dictators has not been good. (Though it’s difficult to know the relevant counterfactuals, of course.)

A few other miscellaneous points:

I guess the big question is what the overall policy should be for dealing with situations like this? If the West gives in to Putin now, what should the response be when he invades other countries? Or when other nuclear armed nations invade other countries? If we are going to give in to any nuclear armed autocrat, that’s a quick recipe for giving over more and more territory and power to malevolent leaders, which seems very negative from a short-termist and longtermist perspective.

Overall, it’s plausible to me that every day we prolong this war might be net positive from a long-term perspective, even if more lives are lost in the short-term. First, it makes it more likely that sanctions bite hard enough and Putin has to give up. Second, a longer war will be a greater deterrent to Putin and other autocrats in the future. Last, prolonging the war plausibly weakens Putin’s and his allies power and strengthens political opposition in Russia. If Putin is succesful now, then the Russian people will update on that and more likely support future nationalistic leaders. However, if Putin fails, they might be more likely to support more conciliatory, peaceful leaders.

Generally, reducing Putin’s influence seems very valuable from a longtermist perspective since he seems to has caused a lot of harm in the past decades. For example, he plausibly helped to increase political polarization in the US, perhaps helped Trump to win the election, weakened international cooperation, etc.

Another point to keep in mind: Imagine we live in the universe where Putin is really willing to consider launching nuclear missiles over this conflict, if Ukraine is not given to him without much resistance. (If we don’t live in this universe, we don’t have to worry about his nuclear threats.) It seems to me that the Putin of this universe would also be fairly likely to invade more countries and make further nuclear threats (to which the world would have to give in again and again) giving him ever more power. The Putin of this universe would be a terrible person to give much power to.

Lastly, I agree that getting involved in hot-button issues is usually not wise (e.g., because they are too crowded) but this is not always true. For example, many EAs also became involved in COVID.

All that said, I agree that this issue is complex and fraught with uncertainty about how one should act.