the US has been stoking it since 8 years earlier
way more than that
america knew what they were doing in late 2000s when they started the ukraine into nato bullshit; a lot of important people, including some ghouls, said russia would see it as an existential threat. i mean, fuck, angela merkel was saying that back then
i’m aware of the counter points
Russia is not governed by amateurs that are easily baited into invading a country
this was a bit surprising to read because if i spend 10 minutes in reddit i’ll leave thinking russians are governed by absolutely inept people who can’t do anything right and always fall for the silliest of cebolinha do pix zelensky’s schemes
and it wasn’t a “bait”, that’s a silly way of looking at it; in the neo-realist view it makes perfect sense that russia would see ukraine as an existential threat after the nato mistake was made, and that war would become inevitable if things escalated - as mearsheimer predicted more than a decade ago in other discussions
ukraine, in practical terms, has been disputed territory in terms of political influence since the fall of the ussr. but before the threat of nato, and the repeated breaking of the non-expansion promise, there was no sign that an invasion like this would ever happen
It’s a bit like blaming the Soviet Union or China for the Vietnam war because they were “expanding” communism or something like that. It makes no sense.
now you’re being disingenuous, vietnam doesn’t share a literal border with america. we should be able to blame the soviets for a mexican war if they attempted to bring mexico into a military alliance in the 80s or something, and the US would be absolutely right to see said alliance as an existential threat because it would be
it’s ok to think that russia deserves an existential threat for whatever reason, such as, i don’t know, “putin bad” (though of course i wouldn’t say he’s as bad as any american president, at least he has never been such for my country). but denying that russia’s change into a bellicose attitude was predictable and avoidable by sane geopolitics is just denying reality at this point
smh revisionism has really gone too far