There's not a lot of proof that they do[1]. Some Western Ukrainians want to. The furthest Western part was once Poland. Many Ukrainians are being conscripted and many fled. The Russian-speaking side wants to join Russia or is at least indifferent.Who cares if it's true for Ukraine or not? They at least have enough sense to not invade other countries. Can't blame them for wanting to defend themselves.
True but there is no question the US and NATO wanted a proxy war. We were told for decades the Ukraine was Russia's line in the sand, thus we knew joining them to NATO or threatening it with joint exercises would lead to this. We wanted it. Whether Russia should/shouldn't fight over this is irrelevant. They were WILLING TO and we knew it. As I said:Several conservative posters here seemed to think that Russia would roll them right over. I don't think Putin was expecting such resistance, along with how much help Ukraine would get from NATO. Authoritarians and dictators tend to overestimate their own capabilities because everyone below them feeding them information are either too scared to tell the truth about how ill-prepared they are and/or are pilfering resources for their own agenda.
[1]Did "We" in the USA want to fight Iraq II or drag out Afghanistan for 20 years or did our leaders/MIC want to and some small percentage of our population willing to fight it?The morality of getting two peoples to kill each-other is dubious in the extreme, whether or not you've judged them to be an enemy since peace is obviously better than war. There are also the risks of wider war - Poland sending more troops, Belarus sending more, the latest Israeli strikes on Iranian factories used to make drones for Russia, and the fact that Russia has nukes and the escalation from tactical nukes to strategic nukes is much shorter than the escalation from conventional weapons to tactical nukes. The latter should give people extreme pause in wanting a proxy war with Russia but Westerners are a suicidal, nihilistic people.
All of this was preventable by making Ukraine a neutral country. Those who say Russia was going to re-constitute the Russian empire or USSR have to explain how this was possible when they can't even get across the Ukraine. The counter-point is usually, "Yeah, because we're helping them!" Well, we could've honored the terms of previous agreements to prevent the invasion in the first place and still helped if they invaded. We didn't because we wanted a proxy war in the first place. We did a similar thing to Iraq and Iran.
Why are we so bloody-minded? What goes around comes around.
Last edited: