| What sovereign ally? The breakaway regions are not recognized by anyone but Russia as sovereign and even Russia recognised them just before the attack for which it was clearly preparing for months (realistically years). You don't legalise your actions by unilaterally declaring a new widely-not-shared reality. Crimea is an even worse example since annexation there happened even without a pretext of defending anyone. It was so blatant disregard of laws that they stripped their uniforms of any identifying insignia and lied about their involvement until they annexed it. Violent part of the president overthrow came mainly from former president's forces shooting on protesting civilians. The protests started why? Because the corrupt president reneged on his promise to start the process of joining EU. For all your worry about US involvement you seem to be pretty uninterested in Russia's. Ukraine had two presidential elections since. My comment about NATO is that expansion was not akin to putting nukes directly into Russia's neighbourhood because they are exactly where they were pre-expansion. They are certainly farther from Russia than theirs are from us (Kaliningrad). And NATO is a defensive pact which you may not believe, but the fact that it doesn't have a joint army and certainly not a European army that would even remotely suffice for a plausible successful attack on Russia makes it really hard for me to believe anyone in Russia would seriously worry about countries that have mostly been very reluctant to invest in their own armies and until Russia's invasion could hardly agree on anything of substance. That Germany intends to increase their defence budget proves exactly nothing since this was a direct consequence of Russia's invasion. Not that long ago their soldiers sometimes used brooms on joint exercises for lack of equipment. I'm sure other defence budgets including probably ours will probably change too as our assumptions have so thoroughly been proven wrong by Russia. I'm not a US citizen and it is completely up to you how you feel about your own country and its government, but I am from a country that willingly joined NATO. I've been critical of most US military interventions in recent history, but I've also not been blind to Russia's meddling in Europe and elsewhere. It is starting to irk me describing this conflict as US or NATO one since neither is in Ukraine. There's just one country with significant forces in another one's so it really shouldn't be difficult to figure out who the aggressor is. I don't care if your are a merchant of doubt or just being influenced by them. I do find it bemusing that someone bothered by being labelled as pro-Russian spends so much time finding excuses for their invasion. |