[tim333]

Your source says the Americans were aware the Russians would be upset by Ukraine joining NATO. Partly as a result I guess Ukraine did not join NATO and was not invited to.

The Girkin article basically says he started the war in eastern Ukraine as an imperialist who thought eastern Ukraine should be part of Russia. I see no mention western warmongers in that. If you can fault the west it seems to me that they caused the war more by forcing Ukraine to give up its nukes in return for promises to defend it from Russian invasion and then not bothering to do so.

[aguaviva]

So what did the West promise to Ukraine and when, in this regard?

[tim333]

It was kind of vague to be honest:

>The Budapest Memorandum consists of a series of political assurances whereby the signatory states commit to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”. But the meaning of the security assurances was deliberately left ambiguous. According to a former US diplomat who participated in the talks, Steven Pifer, it was understood that if there was a violation, there would be a response incumbent on the US and the UK. And while that response was not explicitly defined, Pifer notes that: “there is an obligation on the United States that flows from the Budapest Memorandum to provide assistance to Ukraine, and […] that would include lethal military assistance”.

[aguaviva]

Exactly - "an obligation that flows from [it]" is quite vague, and in any case wasn't the language of the Memorandum itself.