[dogma1138]

Yes but if you were Russia and Ukraine was signaling that it wishes to join the EU and NATO at that point how long would you be able to rely on that lease?

This is the same reason why Russia got involved in Syria, it has only a handful of warm water ports and essentially all of them are at a precarious position where they ship need to traverse potentially hostile choke points.

[ceilingcorner]

Yes I’m just saying that from a realpolitik perspective, nothing really changed for the rest of the world when Russia annexed Crimea. Russia leased the port before, now they own it. Hence the lack of real response other than some sanctions.

[dogma1138]

It’s more that no one will go to war over Ukraine but they might go over T(aiwan)SMC.

Also US political ties to Taiwan are far stronger than to Ukraine these date back to WW2 and even earlier technically.