> Russia said Ukraine joining NATO was a red line in diplomatic discourse and then they acted on it.
They acted on what exactly, considering that - as far as I know - Ukraine is not a NATO member?
They acted on what exactly, considering that - as far as I know - Ukraine is not a NATO member?
As a result of this war, Finland and Sweden joined NATO, turning the Baltic Sea into NATO's internal waters, which isolates Kaliningrad and St Petersburg. Ukraine will sooner or later join it too. The whole western border from Sochi to Murmansk (except puppet state Belarus) will soon be in a mutual defence pact against further Russian aggression. So in this dimension, it's been a spectacular failure for Russia.
The argument of protecting Russians in Ukraine has become morbid at best, after Russia razed to the ground several major cities with large Russian populations, many of whom now lie in nameless mass graves. Daily missile attacks on civilians in eastern Ukraine, where disproportional number of Russians live, doesn't help the case either. After the spectacular counteroffensive, which expelled Russians from Kharkiv region, they have nothing left but threats of widening the war against civilians in pursuit of scorched-earth policy.
So what justifications of this war remain? What halftones are there to discuss? That maybe there still remain some undiscovered arguments in support of blowing up hospitals and power stations?
[1] https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1570808500053475331