[flagged]
The war started in 2014 and Ukraine has been preparing for full scale invasion ever since with or without western help.
That is such a blatant lie. As a person who was in the middle of it I am so tired of people trying to change the timeline to fit their favourite conspiracy.
First period of full scale invasion was driven from the bottom. The president and government was in shock and disorganised trying to work on some sort of a surrender plan while people were standing in lines for ammunition giveaway.
President was not able to accept surrender because the most active people where enlisting and fighting and had their first big win - stopping the "3-day operation" and pushing russians away from Kyiv.
After than happened, it became obvious how in only few weeks of occupation, russians did numerous war crimes - executing elected leaders in small cities, indiscriminate tortures, raping and so on. Read about what happened in Bucha and Irpin, but that was just the most famous places. I have friends who lived under occupation and it the same things happened in other places. It was systematic.
Pushing russia from Kyiv left people in Ukraine in shock what the "brotherly" nation is willing to do just for fun. And it became very clear for everyone what the surrender would mean.
But even besides all that, the war in Ukraine shapes and destabilises European politics right now. Allowing russia to win will have a devastating effect in the whole EU.
This part I wasn't aware of - can you go into more detail, please?
The impression from the beginning (and if it was a façade, it seems it was a very elaborate one) was that Zelenskyy and his crew were never for a moment considering surrendering. As in this famous video they made in the early hours of Feb 25th:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0En27IsHaL0
But since you were a lot closer events, perhaps you can provide some context we may be missing.
"During a series of meetings, by the end of March Russia and Ukraine negotiators produced the Istanbul Communiqué, "Key Provisions of the Treaty on Ukraine's Security Guarantees" - a framework of a possible agreement. The agreement would have declared Ukraine to be a neutral state, put a limit on its military, and list Russia and Western countries, including the US and the UK, as guarantors, obliged to assist Ukraine in case of aggression against it. The talks almost reached agreement, with both sides "consider[ing] far-reaching concessions", but stopped in May 2022 due to a combination of several factors."
And this quote: "Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak said in 2022 that he had negotiated an agreement with Ukraine within a few days of the invasion. This settlement would have ended hostilities in exchange for guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO. The agreement was however blocked by Putin, who "expanded his objectives to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory". A Kremlin spokesman denied the story."
According to the drafts - these "security guarantees" were effectively a surrender, as Ukraine had to limit its army to some very small number making any type of resistance impossible. Adding western countries as guarantors is just sugar coating as with stripped down military, assistance will be impossible and there is no such reality in which UK and US will send their troops against Russia.
Even as bad as this treaty was for Ukraine, Russians never actually considered this negotiations seriously. Top Ukrainian officials were working on this treaty with third-tier diplomats from the Russia side. At that time, Russia was absolutely sure to overpower Ukraine by force and to use this negotiations as the smoke screen or for propaganda purposes in the future.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russ...
According to the drafts - these "security guarantees" were effectively a surrender, as Ukraine had to limit its army to some very small number making any type of resistance impossible.
Strong agreement there. But isn't it also true that it was precisely the obviously flimsy and deceptive "security guarantees" (which apparently were buried in an annex of a much larger document) were (along with the territorial demands, and the atrocities happening on the ground) precisely what convinced the Ukrainian side to back out, once they found out about them?
The point here is that I'm not sure it's fair to say they were giving serious consideration to a "surrender plan" as such. The impression I have is that they were hoping to find a way to negotiate a Russian retreat in exchange for more or less symbolic concessions (e.g. "Ukraine not join NATO"), but no territorial concessions or drastic reductions in armed forces (which seems not unreasonable if your country is being overrun, and you want to avoid the prospect the prospect of being at war indefinitely like it is now). But that once they found out about (and/or Putin's team shifted their terms to include) the "surrender bits", and the news of the atrocities in Bucha/Irpin started coming in, that's when the process broke down.
This is such a disgusting formulation that I struggle to be civil when responding to it. Ukraine was invaded, both in 2014 and 2022. Saying that a victim of an invasion "entered into armed conflict" is like saying that a victim of a rape "had sex".
An invaded country can either capitulate outright (like Czechoslovakia in 1968), or fight back. Most countries, if their strategic position isn't catastrophic from the onset, tend to fight back: that is the whole point of having a military. And east of the former Iron Curtain, most nations would fight back just based on their terrible experience with former Russian control. From Finland to at least Georgia, "Never again" is the common sentiment.
(There are exceptions to this rule, like Slovakia and Hungary.)
"because they were promised support that never showed up"
Are you rewriting a very recent history? In the first weeks, the West was mostly treading lightly about the situation, because they were afraid of the Big Bad Bear. The German Foreign Minister told the Ukrainian ambassador Melnik in no uncertain terms that they were goners, and Germany sent them some old helmets, ffs. France's Macron had his head full of diplomatic-solution dreams that just never materialized, and sat on the phone to Moscow for weeks. Again, there were important exceptions like the UK or Poland, which started sending efficient help immediately, but the West as a whole only started taking support of Ukraine seriously when the Ukrainian army stopped the initial onslaught and pressured the Russian army north of Kyiv to withdraw. Only then it became clear that the Russians overextended themselves and that the country is not about to fall, at least not immediately.
"That's the whole point of sovereignity."
According to Putin, who really likes to speak about sovereignty, the whole point of sovereignty is to do whatever you want.