[tomohawk]

With Russia threatening the Ukraine border, the US and other NATO countries pulled their people out. Military, diplomat, civilian - all out.

This cleared the space so that when Putin attacked, there would be no NATO personnel in the line of fire, and no excuse for a war.

If there was any interest in preventing what is going on, those people would not have been pulled out, and instead, additional exercises with Ukraine would have been conducted, sending a strong message to Putin.

Instead, a vacuum was created that would be hard for someone like Putin to resist.

It's now pretty much too late, except for possibly establishing a no-fly zone in the west of Ukraine to deal with the humanitarian crisis. But, you would need some leadership ability to do that, and that is severely lacking.

[kavalg]

And I still wonder why they did it. Maybe Ukraine is a trap in which Russia got caught, so that many people will die, Russia will get exhausted and then the West can interfere when the time and political climate is right. I am scared to think about this possibility. I would really like to hope that the plan of the West is that Ukraine will prevail and there isn't any plan B that includes the West directly confronting with Russia.

[monday40]

>>the US and other NATO countries pulled their people out. Military, diplomat, civilian - all out.

One exception that I know of: Poland's ambassador Bartosz Cichocki stayed in Kiev. Polish consulate in Lviv is still working.