Putin’s endgame isn’t peace, Colorado’s blow to parents’ rights and other commentary

Ukraine watch: Putin’s Endgame Isn’t Peace

“Instead of stopping the killing, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s negotiating efforts are accelerating Moscow’s intentional targeting of Ukrainian civilians,” warn Jonathan Sweet & Mark Toth at The Hill.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t want “peace as the West envisions it.: Russia has used the “two limited ceasefires” so far “to gain additional advantages on the battlefield.”

To stop the Russian assaults, the Ukrainians “need weapons, ammunition, and intelligence,” plus “the ability to prevent ballistic missiles and drones from striking their cities.”

Ukraine needs “Team Trump to stop enabling Russia’s continued aggression at the negotiating table.”

Instead, Putin “must be stopped” and the Trump administration “must enable Ukraine now.”

Conservative: Colorado’s Blow to Parents’ Rights

“Colorado is poised to pass a law that would threaten the custody rights of parents who ‘deadname’ or ‘misgender’ their own children,” which the court would consider “coercive control,” scoffs Jonathan Turley at his Substack.

Under the law, “referring to your child’s biological gender or given name or pronoun would now be considered harmful and abusive, inviting a court to take your child away from you as a coercive parent.”

In short, the Democratic bill would “require parents to adopt a gender, name, and pronoun that they believe are harmful for their children.”

Wow: “Democrats are not just ignoring parental rights but political realities. They will find that this is not a partisan issue. It is a primal issue.”

Culture critics: Why Israelis Are Happy

Despite a “year and a half of sustained fighting and funerals,” a new report ranks Israel in the top 10 countries for happiness, cheer Natan Sharansky & Gil Troy at Tablet.

Amid “searing political divisions,” Israelis “remain united culturally. Cherishing family, community, country, and history shapes their faith in the future.”

Optimism was once “synonymous with America,” but today “despair afflicts young Americans”; they’ve “lost pride in their nation and its story,” following a “campaign of demoralization” by the left.

By contrast, Israelis feel a part of their history of “repeatedly overcoming oppression” and returning to their homeland.

They “know what they are willing to die for.” “The West needs such good tribalism.” It’s the “essence” of Zionism, and “of the Passover seder message, too.”

Capitol Hill: Andy Kim’s ‘Ideology of Ignorance’

New Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) has “has adopted an ideology of ignorance on foreign affairs,” thunders Commentary’s Seth Mandel.

He this month “voted for Bernie Sanders’s partial arms embargo against Israel,” aiming “to prevent Israel from taking offensive measures against the terrorist entities that attack it.”

Huh? Atop “the strategic senselessness of wanting the Israelis to retreat from Gaza with Hamas still in power,” “Kim’s belief that one can separate Hamas (and Hezbollah) from Iran is by now indefensible.”

Happily, “168 New Jersey rabbis from various denominations signed an open letter calling our Kim for failing the Jews ‘in a critical first vote.’”

They fume: “Despite numerous pledges that he would stand by our ally and by his Jewish constituents, in his first vote on an issue critical to Israel’s security,” Kim “voted with the anti-Israel fringe, against our ally, and our community.”

Urban beat: NYC’s Close-Rikers Nightmare

“The city’s elected officials have long used Rikers’s conditions as an argument to build four new jails” in the outer boroughs, thunders City Journal’s Nicole Gelinas. But now “the flaws in this plan have grown impossible to ignore.”

The scheme was always “fantastical,” as the jails will “cost nearly twice” the projected $9 billion and the first jail won’t open until 2029 — “two years after Rikers is supposed to shutter.”

Despite his reservations, Mayor Adams has been “signing contract after contract to build the new borough jails.”

Meanwhile, the existing jail complex this month reported another potentially preventable inmate death, its fifth of the year.

Rikers’ “management continues to fail and inmates continue to suffer,” but “those conditions at Rikers aren’t inevitable; they are a choice.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board