https://www.cato.org/commentary/four-western-provocations-le...
That being said, this is the wrong forum for this both in terms of audience and topic. Awaiting the mass downvotes for an argument that holds merit but is difficult to swallow for the US public.
No, it was created by the Russian Federation invading Ukraine in 2014.
It was exacerbated by the Russian Federation launching a larger scale, broader invasion in 2022.
> It’s incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here.
Whether or not there is some standard by which some other actor is “malicious”, Russia is, in fact, the aggressor in the war.
> I wonder how we would react if the soviet union was tipped to expand into Mexico.
Mostly wondering where the Soviet Union hid out for the last 33 years.
That was the point, it was shut down - great! But to think that NATO expansion is not seen as a threat to Russia, having nukes on their doorstep is silly. And Ukraine creeping slowly closer to admission is a step too far for Russia.
“President Putin has made Ukraine's preliminary steps to joining NATO the principal grounds for the Russian invasion of Feb. 24, 2022.”
If a NATO-like power controlled by Russia was on our doorstep, we would do the same thing.
The escalation in 2022 was an attempt to complete the war started in 2014; Ukraine had abandoned efforts to join NATO years before Russia started the war and only returned to them after the invasion in which Russia directly occupied a large portion of the country and used proxy, mercenary, and regular forces under false flags to contest another large portion.
“They are trying to get help to defend themselves in the war of aggression we started and have been waging continuously for 8 years” may well be the actual reason for the aggressor escalating the forces committed to that war, but its easy enough to stop people from feeling the need to defend themselves from a war of aggression by, you know, not doing them.
Analyzing the Russia-Ukraine war as if it started in 2022 makes as much sense as analyzing the Israel-Palestine war as if it started in 2023.
> If a NATO-like power controlled by Russia was on our doorstep, we would do the same thing.
Well, maybe the US could just not wage long wars of aggression against its neighbors, and then they wouldn't feel the need to turn to this “NATO-like power” (which would never exist, because Russia is a crap ally, as evidenced by their attempt to create a NATO-like alliance with the CSTO.)