You invoked Godwin's Law because people were comparing Putin to Hitler. Godwin's Law isn't "any comparisons to Hitler are invalid", it's that otherwise banal internet arguments almost invariably end with people making comparison to Hitler. Invading a sovereign nation for territorial gain and committing crimes against humanity is totally fair game to compare to Hitler, per Godwin himself.
Yeah, he's not a psychic. The rhetoric is excessive but plenty of people doubted there would be an invasion. Zelensky clearly doubted it would happen and said so multiple times in February 2022. Well firstly it's 100% clear the US was in favour of this change. It's well-documented senior US politicians and government officials (Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy, Victoria Nuland) were in Ukraine openly saying they supported the protestors. I've seen some reports the Director of the CIA was in the city around this time too. There's also no way those senior people would be there without support and insight from the intelligence and security services. What would you have suspected if Chinese politicians and government officials had been in Ottawa giving speeches to the truckers (and handing out cookies!) last year? Secondly you have Victoria Nuland saying "The United States has invested some $5 billion in Ukraine since 1991, when it became an independent state again after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And that money has been spent on supporting the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to have a strong, democratic government that represents their interests." So the US were clearly taking an interest in Ukrainian politics. The aim of such investment is extremely likely to be to turn Ukrainian public opinion against Russia and in favour of the West. Similar to the obvious foreign policy aims of the Chinese Belt and Road initiative. Again, what would you suspect if China invested billions in Canada in a similar way? Thirdly you have the famous recorded phone call, probably from a few weeks before Yanukovych's overthrow, where Nuland discusses the make up of a new Ukrainian government with the US Ambassador. As the BBC analysis says "this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals." and "The US is clearly much more involved in trying to broker a deal in Ukraine than it publicly lets on." Nuland's "I think Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience" comment is very interesting given the interim prime minister after Yanukovych's overthrow ended up being... Arseniy Yatseniuk. These US officials were very clearly communicating with and advising Yanukovych's opponents. People have made various claims about Russian interference in the politics of other countries, well this is obvious and significant US interference in Ukrainian politics. Nuland's dismissive attitude towards European concerns ("**** the EU") also tells a story and suggests the US feels quite comfortable ignoring its allies and doing whatever it likes. Factor in the obvious implications of the thinking behind the Wolfowitz Doctrine (the US must not allow any other power - particularly Russia - to gain more power and influence and threaten the US's dominant position in the world) and the long, long list of occasions when America has been involved in regime change and it's not much of a stretch to say they might have been involved in some way. They were certainly acting to taking advantage of the situation. None of this changes the fact his removal was unconstitutional and illegal. He'd pretty much accepted this was the end - the “Agreement on the Settlement of Crisis in Ukraine” was signed between Yanukovych and Opposition leaders and had been brokered and witnessed by the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France and by a Russian special envoy. Yanukovych agreed to give up most of his powers and to hold early elections. The opposition leaders went to sell the deal to the protestors who rejected the deal, threatening to "take arms and go". The next day protesters occupied parliament and Yanukovych ended up fleeing for his life, apparently surviving four assassination attempts on his way out of the city. I'm not misreading anything, I've repeatedly said Crimea voted not to be part of Ukraine. Would the people have supported joining Russia? I don't know. It may not have been their first choice but, given their desire to remain in the USSR, it's entirely possible they would have accepted that. Either way it's perfectly reasonable to say they didn't want to be part of Ukraine. If the Ukrainian government had allowed a referendum Crimea would probably have voted to leave Ukraine and history would be different. I'm sure the Russians will be saying all sorts of things in public to try and rally internal support. If nothing else it's always a solid negotiating tactic to say you want more than you're prepared to accept. That doesn't mean it's all you'll accept. I mean, Zelensky has said Ukraine's aim is to reclaim all their territory including Crimea. I doubt that's possible and I'm not even sure he believes it's possible. Where future negotiations end up nobody can say. I can say that Naftali Bennett, who was prime minister of Israel this time last year and tried to broker a peace deal, has recently said he felt there was a 50% chance of a deal at the time. I would have thought those odds were worth pursuing. Usually when a war starts you see wall to wall calls for talks and a ceasefire, but the mood has been very different on this. Although I see China is now calling for peace talks. If they're able to put pressure on Russia and the US is also onside it may well be possible to do a deal.
A few Senators said that they supported the pro-democracy protesters? That's basically the same as a CIA coup! Please link me to these reports on the CIA director. Mostly because it's absurd; you don't send the CIA director to a place in order to effect an operation, the whole concept of covert operations is being, y'know, covert. $5b over 22 years isn't even pocket change in international politics. It's the lint that you find underneath your pocket change. Your evidence is that an American official, who didn't like Yanukovych (because he was incredibly corrupt; "had a palace full of exotic animals" corrupt) speculated on who would ultimately replace him. That's a scandal? Yatseniuk resigned within weeks of becoming PM, because he couldn't keep his coalition together on a budget bill. So if the suggestion is an all-powerful CIA pulling the strings, it lost out pretty much immediately to the true shadow dictator in parliamentary democracies: the very idea of government appropriations. If you think that the Wolfowitz Doctrine played a significant role in the thinking of the Obama Administration, please reconsider. They literally voted on whether to remain a part of Russia, and voted to not do that. It's not a matter of supposition, it actually happened. Yeah, that's the result of poor translation. Here is Neftali Bennett himself, clarifying that it wasn't the West that torpedoed the chances of peace, but rather Russia's habit of slaughtering civilians. https://www.businessinsider.com/isr...west-blocked-ukraine-russia-peace-deal-2023-2
A view on why Putin didn't invade before 2022 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/24/vladimir-putin-invade-ukraine-2022-russia
Money spaffed on voter ID a form of gerrymandering the abysmally inept tory government is using to try and cling on to power. https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/why-will-the-governments-voter-id-scheme-cost-us-up-to-180000000-a-decade/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ers-email&utm_campaign=blog-roundup&utm_content=Blog Round Up 25 Feb C "Elections are generally very well run in the UK – there are extremely low levels of electoral fraud and people have high confidence in voting. In 2019, there were only 33 allegations of impersonation at the polling station, out of over 58 million votes cast in the general and local elections that year. Adding a major barrier to democratic engagement off the back of so few proven cases would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut. There are currently more Tory MPs facing allegations of sexual misconduct than there have been prosecutions for voter fraud."
I will just repeat what I have said before. There is more opportunity to commit voter fraud with a postal vote than there is with someone walking into a polling station, claiming to be someone who he/she is not, yet postal voting will never be stopped. Why? Because it would disenfranchise too many Tory voters, amongst the older age groups, who wouldn’t otherwise vote.
The point here is it fully establishes the American opposition to Yanukovych. Using the term "CIA coup" is a nice touch, implying as it does that I said what happened was entirely arranged and carried out by the CIA. You're too intelligent not to recognise that I said no such thing so I can only conclude this is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent what I said. I said I think it likely there was some American involvement. Hell, at a push the confirmed conversations between US officials and the Ukrainian opposition could be said to meet that threshold. If I had the link to the CIA Director thing I'd have included it but I can't remember exactly where I saw it. I want to say it was something from one of the serious UK papers but I can't find it any more. Not a key point anyway, I wasn't sure whether to remove that before posting. Probably should have done on reflection. This is an absurd statement. To give some context, in 2019, our last election year, total donations to ALL political parties in the UK totalled about £100m. In 2001 the total was £41m. So I can confidently say £5bn is more than all UK political parties received in donations during the same period. Clearly more than enough to have an extremely significant impact in a fairly poor country like Ukraine. Yeah, silly me. Reading that and looking at the tone it's clear they were just speculating about what might happen. Give me ****ing strength. Here's the BBC view at the time. "But it's the larger conversation, which shows the US is manipulating Ukraine just as much as Russia, that is the real diplomatic disaster." And then we have some more explicit straw manning. Some American involvement is not the same as an all-powerful CIA pulling the strings. Not what I've suggested at all. Nice try though! I assume you mean the 1991 vote? But you do know Russia and the USSR aren't the same thing? On December 1st 1991 there was a vote on the question "Do you support the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?" That's in no way the same as a vote on whether Crimea should become part of Russia. As I've already said, turnout was much lower in Crimea than elsewhere in Ukraine, presumably because the nationwide outcome was a foregone conclusion and the Crimean parliament had already voted (on November 23rd) to hold a separate referendum on Crimean independence from Ukraine. There's no poor translation. I said Bennett thought there was a 50% chance of a deal at the time. That's literally what he's said. Didn't say anything about the US or anyone else blocking talks. What happened in Bucha was dreadful but slaughtering civilians is not an exclusively Russian "habit". We know atrocities were committed by British and American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know civilians were killed - albeit less directly than in Bucha - by western air strikes in Libya and Syria. These things are horribly common in wars, which seems to me to be a good reason not to provoke them in the first place and to end them as soon as possible if and when they do start.
The worst thing for me, when it comes to big geopolitical events, is how separated those making the decisions are from the consequences. “War is old men talking, and young men dying”. This is why I hate Biden, the EU, Rishi, Boris, zelensky, Macron etc. nearly as much as I hate Putin. They don’t care. The decisions they take will never affect them or their families. They just chat **** and make huge decisions without thinking the ramifications through. I am not willing to die to protect Ukraine. And unless you are willing to die then you shouldn’t be advocating for provoking a nuclear nation like a Russia. Because make no mistake, we will all die if the nukes go off. So our “leaders” should be striving for peace at all costs.
I'm sure they were opposed to Yanukovych. He was incredibly corrupt, even by the standards of Ukrainian governments, and then he ordered the murder of a whole bunch of civilians. That feels like the sort of thing that it's okay to be opposed to. The US gives nearly $1b per year to Jordan. https://english.alarabiya.net/News/.../Jordan-to-receive-845-million-in-aid-from-US They gave Ukraine less than 25% of that per annum. Yeah, it's pocket change. You suggested (without evidence) that the CIA director was in Ukraine, and then a coup happened. That would seem as if you were suggesting that the CIA was pulling the strings, yes. So, your argument is that Crimea -- which voted to leave the USSR -- really just wanted to be a part of a future Russia? Based on what? All of the available evidence points toward Crimea preferring to be autonomous, full stop, in large part because Crimea had a large population of an ethnic minority that wanted self-governance. Sadly, not an issue in the future, as that minority has been ethnically cleansed by Russia. I again am quite confident that they were not yearning for the chance to be ethnically cleansed. Some quality whataboutism here. Always good to respond to war crimes with a shrug, and to blame the people who are the victims of the war crimes for provoking them. Ukraine provoked Russia by existing and wanting to continue to exist. And it was a poor translation: https://www.businessinsider.com/isr...west-blocked-ukraine-russia-peace-deal-2023-2 Ukraine ended talks because Russia was demanding a number of things, including the annexation of a large percentage of the country, that Ukraine was never going to agree to.
Interesting article by Matthew Syed today, relevant to some of the chat here. Matthew Syed: The autocratic axis gains strength every day — it’s time to take a stand (see below)
Freud’s greatest contribution to psychology was, I think, the notion of “denialism” (Verleugnung). He argued that when facts are too difficult or threatening to encompass, the human mind finds ever more intricate mechanisms to pretend they don’t exist or to explain them away. He often used this term in the context of things such as mortality and the infidelity of a romantic partner, but its implications for geopolitics are perhaps the most significant of all. The most hackneyed example is still the most vivid, so forgive me for mentioning Chamberlain and Hitler. The British prime minister was a decent man who desperately wanted to avoid the bloodshed of another global conflict — and so he patiently avoided dealing with the truth that would have been obvious to any neutral observer. By the time it became too late, we were ill-prepared for war and the Nazis had gathered considerable momentum. I hesitate to say this on a fine weekend, but I’d suggest that we have witnessed a similar scale of denialism over the past two decades. We now face a fully fledged authoritarian axis led by China and encompassing Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iran and, to an extent, the captive population of Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. Just yesterday, the puppet Belarusian state announced more details of its “all-weather strategic partnership” with China, building yet more connective tissue in this rising alliance. And make no mistake: this represents an existential threat to the West. This is a stark truth, but it’s worth looking at the conflict in Ukraine through this lens. We are (rightly) providing munitions to our ally but we are simultaneously depleting our own stocks of ammunition and precision missiles. At the same time, our economies are struggling with the energy crisis and inflation, and China continues its rearmament programme while enjoying discounted oil from Russia, now dependent on its ally to the south and east. It raises the question of how we would cope if China launches an assault on Taiwan or Iran makes a serious move in the Middle East. Niall Ferguson, the British historian, has argued that if one or both of these were to happen, we would, de facto, have entered a Third World War. His point is that the Second World War can be seen as the agglomeration of conflicts in different regions that just happened to occur at the same time — and that we may be on the verge of the same pattern. And, with our depleted armaments, he suggests we would struggle to cope in two, let alone three theatres. This is why we should have boosted military production years ago, and should escalate now. It is also why those calling for an explicit guarantee in support for Taiwan are putting the cart before the horse. What is the value of such a commitment if we lack the capacity to defend the island, a point of which China — whose surveillance of US capabilities has ramped up to the point of purchasing land around military sites — is aware. What should we do, then? It is no good supposing that our nuclear weapons will deter further violations of global rules, for this hasn’t worked thus far. No, our only hope is to understand how we got here in the first place. Putin, we should remember, explicitly wrote down his ambition to create a Russian empire and systematically went about building it — invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia, fomenting division in Ukraine and annexing Crimea. All the while, the likes of David Cameron argued for appeasement, asserting that if we embraced Putin and his criminal retinue a little closer, they would come to absorb our values. Did the money flowing into Conservative coffers and the City of London cloud the Tories’ judgment? It wasn’t just Britain. Angela Merkel was more than happy to increase German dependence on Russian gas, while Barack Obama pulled his punches even after the iniquities of Crimea and the Donbas (as he did after the use of chemical weapons in Syria). As Peter Conradi put it in a superb commentary in The Sunday Times two weeks ago: “Despite the bloodshed, the American leader was reluctant to become too deeply involved . . . [a position] that goaded Putin to further excesses.” At the time, most commentators joined in the chorus of denialism, acclaiming these leaders for their “grown-up approach” — for this is what they so desperately wanted to believe. Cameron was described as a sensible statesman; Obama was seen by many as a terrific president; Merkel was hailed as the most rational leader of the age. It was the geopolitical equivalent of a mass sociogenic delusion. The same dance occurred with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — responsible for killing more people than Lenin and Stalin combined — which was invited into the rules-based order on the basis that it would come to respect these rules. Instead, the Chinese took the advantage of “most-favoured nation” status while loading on tariffs and violating international norms. Did we respond by laying down red lines and protecting our long-term interests? No, like a deranged gambler we threw more chips on the table, inviting them to join the WTO, even as their industrial espionage escalated. As late as 2015, George Osborne was gushing: “No economy in the world is as open to Chinese investment as the UK.” It took Donald Trump, awful in so many ways, to break the spell. And so here we are. “Sensible” commentary continues to warn about the risks of escalation in Ukraine if we provide more weaponry, failing to see that if we don’t act now we merely delay the inevitable. If Putin wins in Ukraine, will he stop there? If he takes the Baltics, will he stop? If Taiwan falls, will the CCP — which explicitly plans a global autocratic hegemony — stop? Where will this leave Poland, Japan, South Korea? Permit me to join the dots: they will do a deal with their oppressors, recognising western pusillanimity knows no bounds. I mean, have you seen the balance of the UN lately? Have you noticed large swathes of the democratic world have yet to condemn the attack on Ukraine, a point exemplified just last week in the general assembly? Some will say this is due to energy interests, or China’s Belt and Road initiative, but this is pure distraction. They are hedging. They have watched the West acquiesce in landgrabs and violations, and fear they will be next. They are acting deferentially to the autocratic axis because they think it will become the world’s dominant power as the West melts away. US congressmen and women and UK parliamentarians accuse these nations of cowardice, seemingly incapable of seeing the irony. If this column sounds angry, forgive me. It is based not on hindsight bias but the pent-up frustration of more than a decade calling out our appeasement of Putin, the oligarchs and the CCP — and the way they’ve been allowed to corrupt our institutions. Today, we face a realistic prospect of global war and should act accordingly on defence spending, military hardware, chips, rare-earth metals, energy security and more. If we wish to save the free world, the time for Freudian denialism is over.
Of course it's okay to be opposed to his regime. Nobody has said it isn't. The point is this is a motive for interfering and getting involved in events. Their mere presence also constitutes means and opportunity. Firstly, and most importantly, what's been given elsewhere is irrelevant. The question is whether the money given was enough to have a significant impact in the country. Clearly $5 billion is. Presumably this formed part of the wider US campaign to interfere in countries where they didn't like the government. Secondly, and this really isn't worth further discussion but I'll say it for the sake of completeness, you're comparing apples with oranges. For one thing it's disingenuous at best to compare annual figures for 2023-2029 with figures for 1991-2013 and for another the $5 billion figure isn't total aid, just what was spent "supporting democracy". Total aid figures will be a fair bit higher. I can't see an easy way to find a total figure and the comparison isn't particularly relevant anyway, but as an example the UK government has said the US started sending military aid to Ukraine in 1991, gave £2.6 billion of military aid in the first decade of independence and was giving around £100m per year pre-2014. I imagine there was more on top of that. Not exactly. I said the CIA Director was there about the same time. And I've acknowledged I should have left that part out. I think I may have misremembered a reference to the CIA Director's visit to Ukraine in April 2014. My argument is that around the time the USSR was breaking up Crimea did not want to be part of Ukraine and they expressed this wish multiple times either in referenda or parliamentary votes. I've explicitly said we don't know what their view would have been on joining Russia. We could have found out - the Crimean parliament had scheduled a vote that, according to the Associated Press, would have been on "whether the Crimea should stay under Ukrainian jurisdiction, reunite with Russia or become independent". But Ukraine prevented them from holding the referendum. Given the region's apparent desire to stay in the USSR it's possible they would have preferred being part of Russia; I can safely say they didn't want to be part of Ukraine. I give a lot more weight to the two overwhelming votes in favour of an autonomous Crimea remaining in the USSR in January and March 1991 - the first 93% in favour on an 80% turnout - than I do to the narrow December 1991 vote with a low turnout which asked a different question and took place after the Crimean parliament had already proposed a separate vote. Crazy I know. A truly shameful and pathetic response. Just smears and falsehoods. I've acknowledged what happened was dreadful. The Ukrainian people deserve nothing but sympathy for the tragic way they've been treated as pawns in a struggle for power and influence between Russia and the USA. Russia should be ashamed of the invasion and the USA in particular should be ashamed of the way they've provoked Russia over the last 30 years. The provocation comes from the eastern expansion of NATO. This isn't a Putin talking point, it's a widely held view in Russia and elsewhere, has been for decades and many people (including US diplomats) have been warning about this for a very long time. Here's a few examples, many of them pre-Putin: Spoiler Bill Burns, current Director of the CIA "Hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here [Moscow]." 1995 memo "Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests." 2008 memo to Condoleezza Rice Yegor Gaidar, acting Russian prime minister under Yelstin "The expansion of NATO is the best gift that you can make to the Russian ultranationalists." Chris Westdal, former Canadian ambassador to Russia "Ten years ago in Moscow, when I was Canada’s ambassador to Russia, I got a call from Yegor Gaidar, who had been Boris Yeltsin’s crucial reform prime minister. Gaidar wanted to see me personally “as soon as possible about an urgent matter.” Intrigued, I received him later that day. He came straight to the point. He had come “to beg, to plead” with me to advise Ottawa against further NATO expansion — which would, he warned, “bring out the worst of Russian instincts.” He was talking about NATO’s 2004 growth spurt, taking in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. His real alarm, though, was over proposals for NATO to expand further, into Ukraine and even Georgia." 2014 column on ipolitics Madeline Albright, US Secretary of state under Clinton "Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargement, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerability and moving Europe’s dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated." from her 2003 memoir, Madam Secretary William Perry, US Defence Secretary under Clinton "In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame." "Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when Nato started to expand" "It wasn’t that we listened to their argument and said he don’t agree with that argument. Basically the people I was arguing with when I tried to put the Russian point ... the response that I got was really: ‘Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.’ And of course that point of view got across to the Russians as well. That was when we started sliding down that path." "We rationalised [the ballistic missile defence system in eastern Europe] as being to defend against an Iranian nuclear missile – they don’t have any but that’s another issue. But the Russians said ‘Wait a bit, this weakens our deterrence.’ The issue again wasn’t discussed on the basis of its merits – it was just ‘who cares about what Russia thinks.’ We dismissed it again." All quotes from a 2016 Guardian article Robert Gates, US Defence Secretary under George W Bush and Obama "trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching... recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests." from his 2014 memoir, Duty Robert Kagan, American neocon, husband of Victoria Nuland "Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading." Jack Matlock, last US Ambassador to the USSR "I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed." Statement to US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1997 George Kennan, architect of the containment strategy that won the Cold War "I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else." interview with the New York Times, 1998 "This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end." Same interview. I'll leave this last quote outside the spoiler. George Kennan talking about NATO expansion in 1998 again. "It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong." And of course here you are, proving a wise man right. I said Naftali Bennett said he thought there was a 50% chance of a deal. There was no poor translation of that statement. He said it.
At all costs. You don’t seem to want any costs for you but are happy for Ukraine to be swallowed up by Russia. At which point would you fight back? First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
That's a massive stretch. Russia gave the Yanukovych regime a $20b bailout in 2013 alone. $5b in two decades is barely a drop in the bucket. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304403804579263963348323966 Seriously, it's a really small amount in the grand scheme. From 2001 - 2013, the US gave far more in aid to Russia than it did to Ukraine: https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd/ukraine/ https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd/russia/ (That has dried up a bit since, as you might expect) Fair enough. We have a good idea what their views on being a part of Russia were, as expressed by their desire to leave the USSR. There is absolutely zero indication that they were yearning to join Russia...what polling existed before Russia rolled in the tanks suggests against it. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-signs-pointed-to-crimea-independence-vote-but-polls-didnt/ The Ukrainians have this strange idea that they should actually have some sort of agency, and Russia doesn't like that, as they would prefer that Ukraine be a repressive puppet like Belarus (which Russia appears to intend to annex in the next few years). Unless your answer is that Ukraine should simply suck it up and be a repressive puppet, 100% of the blame falls on Russia. Again, Russia was opposed to NATO's expansion because it wants to dominate its neighbours. The countries that joined NATO, notably, are the ones least under threat of being dominated, which is precisely the reason that they -- of their own free will -- applied for membership in the alliance. And NATO remained very popular in border countries prior to the 2022 invasion for that reason: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/09/nato-seen-favorably-across-member-states/ So it again comes down to the simple question that no one claiming that NATO set this in motion has yet been willing to answer: do the people of Ukraine (and those of the Baltic states, and Finland, and Georgia, and Belarus, and the Stans) have the right to self-determination or, owing to their proximity to Russia, are they forever consigned to do as Russia demands? There's a reason that the vast majority of those you quoted are realists: hard power advocates who believe that things like human rights are nice, but ultimately take a back seat to great power politics. It's worth noting that support for continuing the war is insanely high among Ukrainians. War is devastating, and yet the Ukrainian people are overwhelmingly willing to continue suffering its consequences, because it at least offers the possibility of having agency in the future, whereas living under the thumb of Russia does not.
