Not all of it.
History would show you otherwise.
This is part of Ukraine’s lobbying effort for strong preemptive, rather than reactive, sanctions against Russia; Ukraine is arguing that Russia can be dissuade from invasion by tougher pre-general-invasion action, and is acting (whether they believe it or not) like they believe that their lobbying effort to Western powers for this approach will succeed in getting the desired policy which will, in turn, dissuade Russia.
So far, whether or not they are right that it would work, they seem to be largely unsuccessful in lobbying, with the US, especially, offering only limited sanctions for the actions related to the separatist regions but holding back the massive general sanctions threatened in case of a broader invasion as a reactive contingency.
Ukraine’s official channels are very clear that they view decisive factor in Russia’s decision making the strength of immediate Western action.
Examples: https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1495922056541753349?...
Viewing the Ukraine statements about not expecting a full-scale invasion without this context is...misleading. They are saying if an invasion happens, it is because the West failed to be resolute in the ways Ukraine expects them to, not that Russia does not intend to invade.
Yes, they think an invasion already is ongoing, but that's explicitly not the only factor in their call for action. It is directly tied to impact on Russian escalation.
Well, a couple hours later and this part is outdated, as the US has now announced the first set of general sanctions on Russia and described existing Russian actions as the beginning of the invasion that was always described as the triggering condition for such sanctions.
First, he is a politician. My rational explanation for his words is to cooldown the emotions. Back in last week, you could see news about many oligarchs departing the country, while others trying to cash out every asset they have. Standing enemies at the borders is economically tragic for the whole country. Trying to sell other, non-catastrophic vision is his duty.
Secondly, there were many variants of the invasion. The full-scale operation often means the Russia forces will attack the entire Ukraine - eastern, central and the western. Many experts say this scenario is highly unlikely, because there will be too many casualties on both sides.
For the record, I do not condone the annexation of Crimea, but I also do not support giving it back to Ukraine, as it just creates unnecessary tension at this point. I understand, how globally we should not just be ok with countries taking parts of other countries, but at the same time the reverse transaction will bring more misery to people of crimea.
If you go in fast and settle the issue quickly, it's a fait accompli and anyone seeking to "reverse the transaction" is just bringing misery.
If you can't settle the issue quickly, support a local insurgency until the international community stops paying attention and then go in. Everybody will be grateful.
It's kind of how the Soviet Union and the west divided up Europe after WWII.
Here's a map of the Allied offensives in the last two years of the war.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Second_w...
Note how the western allies (The US and UK, mostly, plus France, Belgium, Netherlands, and so forth) controlled Italy, France, the Low Countries, and the western half of Germany. The USSR controlled Finland through the Balkans and eastern Germany.
The general agreements of how everything would settle down were set by the Potsdam conference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Agreement), generally along the lines of countries' pre-war borders (although the USSR presented a fait accompli annexing part of East Prussia and attaching parts of east Germany to Poland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oder-neisse.gif) because they had troops there). This result hardened into what eventually became NATO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#/media/File:History_of_NA..., the 1949 version) and the Warsaw Pact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact#/media/File:Iron_C...). And that's how Europe ended up divided into East and West.
(Modulo the invasion of Hungary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary#Communism_(1945%E2%80%...) in 1956 and Czechoslovakia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia#Communist_Czech...) in 1968[1] when those countries flirted with being insufficiently Red.)
The person who described themselves as "Ukrainian-Ukrainian" is implying that their own assessment of the situation is likely to be more accurate since they are not just an expatriate.
The first three groups form a continuity and is not perfectly correlated with loyalty to Ukrainian state.
Plus hungarians and some tatars.
Caveat emptor: I'm not from Ukraine.
One fact which people forget: Ukraine decided to end support to minorities, as such there is no longer possible to study in native language. This type of nationalism should not be supported at all. Ukraine is no saint.
Source, official website of Ministry of Education of Ukraine. (in Ukrainian) https://nus.org.ua/news/mon-pidrahuvalo-skilky-shkil-navchay...
Just FYI - like you, I grew up hearing it called "the Ukraine" (like "The Philippines" or "The Netherlands") but apparently that's changed and it's just "Ukraine" now.
From my point of view, it seems Canadians are team Russia here, especially our prime minister.
I'm going to show my left-wing bias but Bill Maher and Jimmy Dore both called Trudeau Hitler. They are objectively right, but what happened?
Canada had some ineffectual blockades, but at the time of the emergency being invoked. Those were gone. So the emergency was ONLY the protest in Ottawa.
The justification for the emergency is the military occupation and they used the givesendgo hacked data to analyze that around 50% of the raised money was from the USA. The allegation is that the USA is somehow doing this? This is absurd but why is Trudeau overreacting to all this? What did he fear?
I think I might know why he fears the USA.
That's a great question, but I don't know if I know the answer. Overall, the US as world police, Obama and his nobel peace prize and 7 wars, and virtually entire existence of the USA they have been at war. It's kind of easy to see this point of view.
However, I would generally say our media was saying the invasion wasn't imminent. Largely reporting the Ukraine government denied any invasion was coming.
This I would say as well was the story across political lines.
The only thing really covered was how Trudeau was being actively excluded from diplomacy by Biden.
https://twitter.com/annmarie/status/1485652537105600516/phot...
Though not about Ukraine... our media covered how we got excluded from the security alliance as well: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
I dont think I ever read anyone in our media suggesting Biden lost respect or trust in Trudeau but now in hindsight...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poroshenko-ukraine-russia-c...
Ukraine is on the other side of the planet and they are singling us out to ask for aid that we aren't giving?
>and the idea that Canada has aligned itself with Russia)?
Well as I said, a week ago I didn't believe in this at all. In my mind, it was a wackadoodle conspiracy theory.
Here's a 5 minute video from Jimmy Dore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJdHF7J_ZZM
It is public knowledge that the liberal party are members of the WEF. So is Putin. Both Putin and Trudeau have done keynotes. They are publicly linked.
It's a whole different thing to say this is some evil cabal or some diplomatic war-supporting effort. For all I know Trudeau is a mole and we are still complete allies to the USA, if not protectorate.
But frankly, I look at the last week. Russia invaded and Canadians are under an unjustified national emergency with the government seizing bank accounts with no due process or redress. We do have political prisoners and global celebrities from across the political spectrum are calling out Trudeau as Hitler.