Yes because only the USA has agency in this world. Russia didn't choose to invade and Ukrainians didn't choose to defend themselves. As someone from Europe this lack of perspective you showing here is exactly why we are tired of the US atm.
I’d say you lack perspective, this war started in 2014 not when Russia crossed the border. Russia’s agency isn’t going to extend to ignoring existential threats.
And you think that those neighbors have no agency themselves? Russia is a much bigger threat to all of them than NATO was ever to Russia. If you’re a country bordering Russia, you’re fucked, you’re almost guaranteed to be invaded every few decades or so (unless Russia is currently occupying you.. then you are safe). So you have to do whatever you can to survive.
“neighbors murdering ethnic Russian civilians”
Only “ethnic” Russians right? Russia citizens (e.g. like the Chechens) on the other hand don’t count and can be murdered at will with no repercussions by the Russian government.
Anyway if that’s what Russia truly cared about they could have easily solved this without resorting to war.
As a Ukrainian who lived through all this stuff right in the middle of the events (Luhansk region, 2014-2016, occupied territories), I tried to resist the urge to reply but could not.
The examples you provide are not an existential threat, but an excuse for an opportunistic expansion due to Ukraine being weak. There is a plethora of objective evidence without me providing any extra anecdotal information.
What I wanted is to give you a slice of my personal perspective. I lived through this shit, my classmates were raising “LPR” flags on my city’s admin buildings, I crossed the demarcation line multiple times during both hot and cold phases of the pre-2022 conflict and have seen a lot of stuff.
I guess the main issue was that Ukraine was bad at public relations and communication (still is btw, plenty of recent examples), and they just were not able to counter the information war at that crucial point, and then many times more. When the Russians started bringing in military equipment and training locals, a lot of local populace had their mental timeline already messed up by Russian propaganda because historically, nobody in that area really watched the Ukrainian media. In reality, they were the first to escalate the conflict while Ukraine was still too slow and incompetent and preparing to respond.
During the hot phase, where was A LOT of military incompetence that caused many civilian and military casualties. There were also certain instances of internal power struggle within “LPR” that is not talked much about, it also had civilian casualties.
But after the hot phase of 2014, the conflict literally froze. There was no shelling of cities, no casualties besides people stepping on mines. The whole 8 year genocide thing was fake, and everybody who actually lived there knew that. They were doing business across the demarcation line, huge numbers of people and cargo traveling, all while both sides were shooting their daily quotas of artillery shells into the field.
In 2020-2021 (!!!), while literally everyone was fine with status quo and busy with Covid, the “LPR” and “DPR” started preparing for draft, enlisting people (not drafting) etc. What happened in 2021-2022 was another Ukrainian loss from the information war perspective, where Russian propaganda switched to a new narrative and succeeded in reeducating the local population (including my relatives), where these “8 years” appeared. The whole thing was so comically rushed and staged that it felt surreal.
I guess, the mainland Russian audience was a-OK with this theatrical interpretation which was the main goal. Meanwhile, the borders of “DPR” and “LPR” were closed a week before the 2022 invasion and they already started grabbing literally every “ethnic Russian” on the streets to go to war.
How exactly was NATO or Ukraine an existential threat? In what way?
You can’t just say “existential threat” and justify everything thing you do while repeating that you’re protecting yourself from [imaginary] “existential threats”
