So what is your plan ? Keep ducking away and enabling Russia to live out it's dreams of a new USSR?
If Russia attacks another country or group of countries, it's another situation and another story.
I understand the threat, and that we shouldn't let us be walked over. But we should also not think that we can do anything without things escalating.
This is easier said than done, of course, but limiting yourself to the dichotomy guarantees one or other outcome.
And the main thing they wanted is what they've said all along - Ukraine agreeing not to join NATO or host foreign military bases. Everything else was negotiable - they were even willing to compromise on the exact status of Crimea! Then we got good ole Boris Johnson telling Zelensky to 'just fight'. One brilliant leader offering wisdom to another, with the outcome anybody could expect when such minds come together.
Notably Putin has also somewhat uncharacteristically shared the details of conversations he was having with Biden shortly prior to the war. And it was again all about Ukraine's NATO status. Biden refused to budge beyond agreeing to delay Ukraine's entry by 10-15 years (which was probably a defacto sort of 'we'll wait until you die' offer). Russian began amassing forces relatively shortly after that conversation.
Come to think of it, this isn't even much of a hypothetical as this is essentially exactly what the Cuban Missile Crisis [1] was about, but the US was freaking out about weapons that were not even on a shared border, merely 'too close', bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war over it.
You can imagine all you want, but that's not what happened in regard to Ukraine.
What did happen is that Ukraine formally renounced its NATO aspirations in 2010, but Putin invaded anyway in 2014.
In 2019 Ukraine added joining NATO as a goal to their constitution, and the US was obviously rapidly moving in that direction with them. It was widely predicted that doing this would lead to war, and well here we are!
[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-a...
I have three questions for you:
(1) Can you name one of the regions Putin is attempting to annex, aside from Crimea, that was "heavily ethnic Russian?"
(2) Can you explain the circumstances which caused that particular region to have a majority Russian-identified population? (In just a sentence or two, please).
(3) Something else happened in 2014, in between the two events that you claim happened. Why is this missing from your chronology?
(2) Coal + industrialization + peasants seeking a better life.
(3) Actually quite a lot happened, but I assume you're referencing the fact that a small number of Russian forces were deployed to Crimea. A practical issue when territory "peacefully" changes hands is deterring the former "owners" from simply coming in and trying to kill everybody to immediately reclaim it. The important issue is whether those forces drove coercion or otherwise manipulated the outcome of the referendum in a way outside the will of the people. This is what the West tried to prove, but they instead ended up proving the exact opposite! Incidentally, a comparable referendum held in Donbas was likely outside the will of the people, and consequently - Russia did not recognize it.
(2) Coal + industrialization + peasants seeking a better life.
The question referred to the Crimea, not the Donbas.
If you wish, you can answer the question: "Can you explain the circumstances which caused the Crimea have a majority Russian-identified population?"
I'd be genuinely curious as to your response.
Crimea is far easier on #2. Crimea has never been majority (or plurality) Ukrainian. Prior to the Russians it was Tatars, but they were exiled after WW2 by Stalin for collaboration with the Nazis. The reason Crimea ended up under Ukrainian control is because in 1954 Khrushchev 'gifted' it to Ukraine to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Agreement. That agreement is when the Cossacks that lived in 'the ukraine' (Ukraine translates to something like at the borderlands/frontier) signed a treaty swearing allegiance to Russia. At the time of the gift it was mostly just a token gesture, because Ukraine was just another normal part of the USSR and so basically nothing changed.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Demographics_of_U...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Demographics_of_U...
Wrong. The Ukrainian parliament voted 328-vs-0 to hold early elections after the sitting president got over hundred protesters killed and ran away from the country fearing criminal prosecution.
> leading numerous regions that are heavily ethnic Russian, including Crimea, to declare their independence.
Wrong again. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that it was an operation by Russian military and security services. They could not find any evidence of an actual separatist movement.
> In 2019 Ukraine added joining NATO as a goal to their constitution
... which is 5 years after Russia invaded Ukraine.
> the US was obviously rapidly moving in that direction with them
Again, obviously wrong. Three years later, by the time Russia launched the full-scale invasion, Ukraine was still nowhere near joining the NATO. We saw rapid timeline with Sweden and Finland. Informal negotiations started early 2022, formal invitation issued June 2022, all ratifications complete by national parliaments by April 2023 (Finland) and March 2024 (Sweden). To this day, Ukraine has not even been invited to start talks. The process hasn't even begun yet.
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What's the point of posting obvious lies and excuses? These are not even valid arguments, but clear factually incorrect statements.
And yes, this whole bullshit about "they're not a real nation" etc was very much a thing in Russia before 2022, and before 2014 even. I should know; I grew up there. I remember reading "Эпоха мертворожденных" in 2008, and that's pretty much what Russia actually did in 2014 (except of course the whole "NATO occupation" of the non-separatist parts turned out to be imaginary). But I remember hearing similar sentiments in the 90s as a kid, as well. And since Ukrainians are well within the Russian cultural orbit, they were aware of those trends, too - and took appropriate precautions. This notion that invasion wouldn't have happened if they didn't seek NATO membership is wrong.
Reading Plato and other great philosophers is interesting (The Republic in particular is an amazing read) because they can often sound like prophets - predicting the future with such extreme accuracy at a time that ostensibly had basically nothing in common with ours. But I think their 'secret' is simply that they were great objective observers of the behavior of humanity. Because history is not especially creative, it keeps repeating itself endlessly, because humanity doesn't change except as a product of technology changing.
And this reality of the world remains true to this day. It's just that the means change. Alexander the Great wisely stabilized his massive empire largely by letting areas under his control maintain an exceptional degree of sovereignty, minimizing overt resistance to his control. The US took this to the next step by not even directly claiming nations, but instead simply remotely controlling the governments of these nations, and simply overthrowing/replacing them when they became uncontrollable - and repeating the process. Made even easier with democracy, which has a paradoxical tendency to elevate unpopular people on the take, rather than popular ideologues, to power.
Whenever there's any need - we can easily compel the various defacto vassal states under our control to act, even when directly against their own self interest. See: Germany for the most overt illustration of this. Extracting wealth from vassals became somewhat less relevant with the introduction of fiat currency. So long as we force the world to use our money, we can simply print money as needed, export the inflation to other countries, and it effectively functions as real growth - at least until the whole system inevitably collapses in on itself in a debt filled void.
That wasn't what Putin said in his December 2021 ultimatum.
But more generally when skilled leaders want "X" they generally instead say they want "X, Y and Z." The goal is so that you can then 'compromise' by withdrawing your desire for Y and Z. And in the best case, you may even get at least some of Y and Z.