Even if that were true (and I don’t think even Putin is still pretending that this is what his special operation is about), you think the right recourse is to invade that country and attempt to annex it into your empire? Killing hundreds of thousands in a war of attrition? Really amazing peaceful moves from the certainly democratically elected leftist Russian president, bravo.
You don’t have to take Putin’s word for it, the head of NATO has already admitted this publicly:
The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm
you think the right recourse is to invade that country and attempt to annex it into your empire?
That’s not what the war is about. https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-war
However, if you don’t trust a renowned political scientist like Mearsheimer, RAND published a whole study titled “Extending Russia” that explains in detail why the US wanted to provoke a conflict in Ukraine https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
Killing hundreds of thousands in a war of attrition?
The war could’ve been over within a month, but the west sabotaged negotiations. Pretty clear who wants this war to keep going. The war could’ve been avoided entirely if the west didn’t insist on NATO expansion and didn’t overthrow the government in Ukraine.
That is a nice big quote you got there. But it doesn’t say anything about right-wing governments, coups or anything the like. And I said, for the sake of the argument I’ll pretend with you it is true.
Of course, surrendering is a great defensive strategy. I’m sure WW2 would have been a whole lot shorter if Stalin just capitulated right away. But I’ve got another brain tickler for you. The aggressor can end a war immediately, by not even starting it :)
It’s amazing how people just keep regurgitating these talking points. It’s just so incredibly shallow and demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the situation. There is no comparison with WW2 here. In fact, the best comparison to make would be Yugoslavia where NATO recognized separatist regions as being independent, and then had them invite NATO to invade and destroy Yugoslavia. That’s the actual model that Russia is using in Ukraine.
