Ukraine (after abandoning efforts after the MAP rejection -- done at Russia's insistence -- in 2008) only started looking at NATO membership again after Russia invaded, so it is ludicrously disconnected from reality (but exactly representative of Russian propaganda!) to try to use that to justify the invasion.
Do you remember Russia’s promises when Ukraine voluntarily ceded their nuclear arsenal to Russia?
Claiming that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is caused and justified by a thing which happened after and in response to that invasion is arguing for retrocausality. It is not "going back in history and cherry picking events" to point out when and how the current war started in a discussion of the causes of the current war, especially when an event that happened after and in response to the start of the current war is argued to justify the aggressor in the current war.
so you would preffer russian troops killing political opponents and protesters in ua, like they did since 1992 in belarus till these day to avoid """coup"""?
or you prefer russian troops did 10x more massacre and hide it, instead they did 10x less in bucha and did not have time to hide?
btw just talk with pl and cz old people how their western coup was going.
seems like people prefer western coup to russian massacress and mass graves...
There was a coup orchestrated by the west in Ukraine in 2014. Followed by an escalation of a complicated situation that is not clear cut like people in the west like to make things seem. After the coup, there was suppression of Russian things by the western backed and planted regime.
Of course things may have eventually escalated if Ukraine and the west are doing that and the Russian separatists in the east are provoking in DPR and LDR.
I am sympathetic to Kissinger, Dugin, and Mearsheimer views on geopolitics if you must know.
When did they become accepted wisdom? What if it isn't true?
But, it is you that did just that. You picked up an event from the 1960's in a totally different continent, to justify Russian continued agressions against Ukraine.
I answered by actually pointing out an event from 10 years ago that's directly related to this war.
For me, it's clear that a "coup" is not when the democratic will of the people outs a puppet that was put in place by Moscow. While you have the opposite opinion.
Ask yourself why countries bordering Russia want to join.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08KYIV1144_a.html <-- this one is about Ukrainian spending on a pro-NATO information campaign
The Ukrainian president who was anti-NATO is the one that the Euromaidan deposed. https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-scraps-nato-accession-plans/a-...
Here's France24's take in 2014 when Ukraine voted to abandon "non-aligned" status: https://www.france24.com/en/20141223-ukraine-parliament-vote... Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and its support for the separatist insurgency appear partly rooted in fears that the Western military alliance could expand its presence on the Russian border.
Then in 2019 we have this: Ukraine President Signs Constitutional Amendment On NATO, EU Membership (Radio Free Europe, 2019) https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-president-signs-constitution...
Followed up by Zelensky doubling down on NATO later that same year: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-president-promises-nato-refe...
And then Trump sending additional lethal aid to Ukraine at the end of the year: https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/04/trump-to-see...
My personal opinion is that these events in 2019 were the last straw for Putin. He probably made the decision to invade early in 2020....but had to pause those plans while the whole world grappled with COVID. It then took them into mid-2021 to get the ball rolling on staging their forces for invasion, and then they were delayed again due to Xi Jinping telling Putin to not fuck up his Beijing Olympics or he wouldn't get tacit support from the PRC. All of which meant that the early-2022 invasion was likely caused by NATO-related issues that were looking increasingly concerning 3 years earlier.