Not at all. The US has tried to minimize its involvement in this war before it even started.
In the run-up to the full-scale invasion, Biden spent more time saying what he would not do than what he would do.
Think that, to this date, the US has not supplied a single fighter jet. The only airframes Ukraine received were provided by European nations.
About 30 Abrams tanks were delivered by the US, and that only after it was clear Ukraine's 2023 counter offensive had failed.
Since Trump's return to power, not a single aid package has been approved. To the contrary, the Trump administration has sided with Russia and North Korea on UN General Assembly votes about Ukraine.
Remember that in the 1990's the US put Ukraine under pressure to give up its nuclear arsenal (2nd in the world at the time) against promises that its sovereignty and independence would be respected (Budapest memorandums). Who is going to believe the US now?
Russia is basically ok with Ukraine being a buffer state so long as it doesn't become a NATO ally. At this point Ukraine will probably have to give up the Russian ethic regions adjoining Russia to get peace.
Imagine if Mexico tried to join BRICS or the Warsaw pact back when it existed. You can see the realpolitik logic here. If you want stability and peace for the Ukrainian people, do a deal. Ukraine wasn't in play but for NATO expansion eastward. Now it is, and it is the fault of the United States that this situation was created.
US politicians crow about what a great deal for them the Ukraine war is since others are fighting and dying to fight USA's enemy*. Very blood thirsty.
* The enemy of the USA ruling class, I personally don't harbor any animosity towards Russia though I dislike their form of government—a form that resulted from US attacks on the post-Soviet political economy.
> * The enemy of the USA ruling class, I personally don't harbor any animosity towards Russia though I dislike their form of government—a form that resulted from US attacks on the post-Soviet political economy.
So, Russia bears no responsibility for its own government, which is somehow manufactured by the US? OK, that's a new one on me.
Ukraine started seeking NATO membership when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. NATO members refused, following this flawed logic "that it would provoke Russia". In 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, Ukraine was still a neutral country.
The reality is that Russia had had NATO countries on its borders (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) for years before it invaded Georgia and Ukraine. And two years ago Finland joined as well. Russia did nothing to prevent this.
NATO is a defensive alliance. The only thing it threatens is Russia's imperialism and expansionism.
Russia broke countless agreements where it recognized Ukraine's borders and independence, so Russia's signature is now worthless.
Everyone knows how Russia treats the peoples of lands it conquers: torture, executions, deportations etc. No country could accept these terms. It would amount to national suicide. For this reason Ukrainians have to choice but to keep fighting.
> Would you just roll over and let Russia invade your country?
Apparently, many Ukrainian men would. Or maybe they'd seen it like a mere change in upper management, initially. Otherwise the Ukrainian government would not have felt it necessary to forbid them from leaving the country or to press/force them into military service.
(And, frankly, the people affected are the only ones whose opinion should matter in this situation.)
> Bleeding to repel the Russian invasion, you mean
It's always easy to spill other people's statistical blood from the other side of the planet.
I'd have taken the March pre-2022 deal rejecting NATO alignment in a heartbeat. In fact, even as the deals Russia offered got steadily worse they were always calibrated to be a better alternative than continuing to fight and lose.
NATO isnt powerful enough/motivated enough to help Ukraine fight off Russia despite pledging unlimited support in March 2022 (now proven to be a hollow lie).
There was nothing logical about Ukraine's decision to reject neutrality and to try and set itself up as a NATO military bulwark along Russia's most vulnerable border.
I'd have taken that too, with security guarantees. Otherwise what do you do when Russia comes back for another bite of the pie? That's why they want to join NATO.
"Give it independence" is a very misleading way to state it. Ukraine has declared its independence unilaterally; it's just that Russia wasn't really in a position to do anything about it then.
Yeah, they invaded twice and in each case a little diplomacy would have been sufficient to roll back the invasion. Diplomacy which was categorically refused for terrible reasons.
Hey, if you want to fight and die on behalf of your Western empire then Ukraine will be only too happy to have you and every Ukrainian of fighting age about to be thrown on to the front lines will be only too happy to trade places.
But, I get it - it's easy to treat little things like honest diplomacy and other countries' security concerns with complete disregard when you're not the one being thrown on to the front lines to die as a result of it. Only Ukrainians are forced to do that.
>Repeating Putin's talking points probably isn't going to convince anybody
Putin's a terrible human being and so are his supporters but he's not all that different to his western imperialist counterparts and the supporters of their narratives - people like you.
> Yeah, they invaded twice and in each case a little diplomacy would have been sufficient to roll back the invasion.
That's just a stalling tactic. The very people who built Russian diplomacy and personally mentored figures like the current foreign minister Lavrov have commented that Russia's offers have never been serious, pointing to details such as the fact that the people leading the negotiations are low-level functionaries without any authority to negotiate anything. You don't send errand boys if you're serious about negotiations.
Diplomacy is always a murky world but in this case there is one and clear stand out example where what you said is true. It was announced that Minsk 2 was purely meant as a stalling tactic to allow re-armament.
Unfortunately for your little theory it was Ukraine and Angela Merkel who admitted this and not Russia.
This was made even more painfully obvious just before that day in Feb 2022 when Russia demanded Ukraine adhere to this multilateral (i.e. also agreed by Europe) agreement theyd already agreed to and Ukraine just point blank refused, preferring to fight.
Russian diplomacy follows a Clausewitzian model (i.e. that you're better off in tbe long run if you are up front about your intentions), unlike the western model where one day you announce talks with the Iranians pledging good faith in your negotiations and the next day you launch a surprise bombing raid, hoping this means you got 'em good.
These are just stale deflections. Russian diplomacy is indeed stuck in Clausewitzian times: diplomacy is seen as an extension of military strategy and not as a tool for building durable cooperation. This becomes especially apparent when compared to how former great rivals like France and Germany, the UK and Spain, or Sweden and Denmark now conduct their relations with one another.
When you put Russia against this, it's abundantly clear how hopelessly outdated present-day Russian diplomacy is; it has much more in common with the distant past than with the modern day.
>Russian diplomacy is indeed stuck in Clausewitzian times: diplomacy is seen as an extension of military strategy and not as a tool for building durable cooperation.
Except that is what they are doing with BRICs with the entire rest of the world. It's only the American-led western hegemonic bloc they're clashing with - exclusively puppets and military junior partners of the United States like France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Outside of this hegemonic military/economic bloc nobody has sanctioned Russia, which is why the effect of the sanctions we levied ended up being so pathetic. At the same time there is a huge appetite for joining the BRICs because the rest of the world is that fucking sick of us.
>When you put Russia against this
"This" is an empire in decline. The west is already following the same path as the USSR in the 1980s (dutch disease, massive industrial decline, fast incoming military overspend), except tailed off with more tacit and explicit support for genocide as a cherry on top. We're the best.
> In fact, even as the deals Russia offered got steadily worse they were always calibrated to be a better alternative than continuing to fight and lose.
They were always calibrated to be refused and there is a reason for that: NATO expansion is a red herring that Russia wants to use as an excuse for the invasion.
> There was nothing logical about Ukraine's decision to reject neutrality and to try and set itself up as a NATO military bulwark along Russia's most vulnerable border.
Ukraine has been neutral, and in fact quite friendly to Russia, both according to its Constitution and popular polls, up until the point Russia annexed a piece of its land and invaded another piece in 2014. By doing that Russia has shown that no promise of neutrality can save Ukraine from its tanks. I am surprised that some people are still talking about neutrality in good faith in 2025.
Remind us why a purely defensive alliance lead by a country on the othrr side of a planet needs to be closer and closer to the borders of the country against which that alliance was created?
Because small countries of Europe that don't want to be invaded by Russia seek to join the alliance that was specifically created to prevent such eventuality for its members.
That's why of the 4 wars it has taken part in in the last 30 years, 4 have been wars of aggression while 0 have been defensive (article 5 was invoked for 9/11 but occupying afghanistan wasnt a defensive move it was an imperial move).
It's a dog eat dog world out there for sure but sometimes the 14 year old boy isnt safer joining the crips for protection from the bloods. Sometimes he's just sacrificed as a pawn in a wider turf war as the crips' promises of protection ring hollow.
This is nonsense. The primary motivation for NATO is defense - the fact that it was not involved in defensive wars is rather evidence of its extreme effectiveness, being strong enough collectively that nobody even tries. OTOH countries not in it have been invaded (like Georgia and Ukraine).
It neither needs nor wants to be closer, and the long-standing rejection of Ukraine's membership application is a testament to that. Yet every neighbor of Russia is desperate to join it to secure themselves against yet another expansionist dictatorship in Russia.
