>Being a U.S. ally no longer guarantees that you will be protected by the U.S. as Ukraine is seeing.
The US never promised to protect Ukraine. It's often claimed that the Budapest Memorandum was a promise from the US to protect Ukraine, but this is misinformation. Read the memorandum for yourself if you don't believe me, it's not very long:
I don't think that is really relavent. Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america). Even without a formal promise, other countries are going to notice america hanging ukraine out to dry and add that to their calculations when deciding who to be buddy-buddy with.
> Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Also because it was considering joining the EU.
The Russians threatened at least as early as 2008 that they would invade Ukraine if they did either. They actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and captured a lot of territory.
Why did the US and their European allies not plan for the Russians doing what they had threatened to do and had actually done in the past? It seems incompetent.
> ousting of the legitimate government, secession of crimea and donbas, ukraine declaring donbas secessionist to be terrorists and starting a bombing campaign and the civil w
That is the Russian argument justifying the invasion. its irrelevant to whether an invasion occurred or not
Their final paragraph is straight up conspiracy theory. Little wonder they grumble about Wikipedia in their other comment, rather than linking to a serious source. Tough to do that when no credible sources support your absurd claims.
> If you want to believe that Russia had no military forces in Ukraine before 2022
that's not what i said, and supporting a warring faction doesn't really qualify as "invasion" nor "taking territory".
also, i would recommend very strict skepticism about politically sensitive content on wikipedia. it can still be useful for general timelines, but a simple check at the sources (when there are any) will reveal they tend to be overwhelmingly one-sided.
it's fine if you want to learn about, say, birds, engines or stars, though.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has established that there was no genuine separatism in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. From the get-go, these were operatives of Russian military and special services, or people under their direct control. Girkin, one of the main leaders of Russian forces in Ukraine, has confirmed the same: there was no grassroots action; it was them who started the war in 2014. Removing insignia from uniforms does not make it any less of a foreign invasion.
ECHR's lengthy verdict on the responsibility of the MH-17 shootdown lays out all the relevant facts.
without even commenting the evidence considered (mainly 'osint' claims) that ruling completely disregards the right of donbas to self-determination (wether organized or not). it was clearly a political ruling.
you know, as an european over sixty that actually voted to join the eu i have long learned that ... european courts are full of shit, as are most of the institutions of the "international rules based order" btw. i know, that's the best we have. which means we're fucked.
but funnily enough and back to the question: that ruling not even suggests the concepts of "invasion" and "territiorial gains".
one has to wonder... if donbas didn't really want to secede (or didn't know how), and it was all russian troops ... why would kiev shell residential areas in donetsk with massive civilian casualties in july of 2014? so they would actually have a reason to secede? doesn't that court full of shit have a case for that?
> that ruling completely disregards the right of donbas to self-determination
Because there are no grounds for it. The right to self-determination is the right of an ethnicity to self-govern. The people of Donbas are not a distinct ethnicity, but almost entirely either Ukrainians or Russians. That's a very clear-cut case.
> if donbas didn't really want to secede (or didn't know how)
There was no secession movement. Opinion polls placed secession in the "fringe" category. More people in Texas support secession than did in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
> The right to self-determination is the right of an ethnicity to self-govern
there isn't really a clear definition of what constitutes "a people". etnicity might be a common trait but it doesn't have to. basically if all or a considerable majority in a territory want's to self-govern, the un charter recognizes that right. in practice this right has never been honored unless these people found a way to enforce it.
> There was no secession movement
oh, there was.
prior to 2014 there was a consistent history of voting pro-russian parties, like the "party of regions". as early as in the 90s the "interfront of donbas" was advocating for regional autonomy, federal structure, recognition of russian as an official language and consultative referenda were held showing consistent support. kiev obviously ignored all this, but there was clear a will for self-govern and attachment to russia.
indeed not secession outright. secession is a bold move. that happened immediately after the coup in 2014, because all these people felt betrayed and threatened (and with good reason). excuse me if they weren't as orgnaized as the eu would demand. one irony of that eu ruling is not only that it fails to consider the right to self-determination, but that it recognizes the ukranian government as the administrator of donbas completely obviating the fact that that was an ilegitimate government, installed by a foreign power (we have victoria nuland on record reciting her staff picks for that) after ousting the elected government, that then immediately started to exert discrimination against culturally russian ukranians, particularly in donbas. it all went to hell form there.
> there isn't really a clear definition of what constitutes "a people".
It's true that the wording is open to interpretation, but not in the case of Ukraine. Nobody considers the Ukrainians and Russians living in the Donbas as a separate ethnicity or people; not they themselves, nor anyone else.
> after the coup in 2014
There was no coup. "Ukrainian MPs have voted to oust President Viktor Yanukovych and hold early presidential elections on 25 May." (BBC, 22 February 2014).
> the wording is open to interpretation, but not in the case of Ukraine. Nobody considers the Ukrainians and Russians living in the Donbas as a separate ethnicity or people; not they themselves, nor anyone else.
that is an unsubstantiated claim that's actually false and doesn't even preclude the right of any group of people in sufficient majority to exercise self-govern, by their mere will and manifestation, so i'm not going to even bother debunking it (again).
> There was no coup. "Ukrainian MPs have voted to oust President Viktor Yanukovych and hold early presidential elections on 25 May." (BBC, 22 February 2014).
that vote didn't reach the required 3/4 of the threshold required by the constitution for impeachment. the subterfuge employed to ignore that requirement was that yanukovich had allegedly relinquished his position, which actually means he had to flee the country for his life because of the threat of the nazi nationalists (armed by the us and on the loose around kiev), as did many of the 122 deputies that weren't even present in the voting. so you arm extremist groups for years, groom ngos to stirr up discontent funded by usaid and ned, then weaponize legitimate protests with violence, which then spirals out of control as the legitimate government overreacts in the crackdown, then you make huge international media fuzz about it, then you threaten the president to flee, then you hold a sham vote to impeach him, then you instate a "provisional" government you already decided. democracy installed! if all this sounds familiar it's because it is the good old cia coup playbook.
she had to actually publicly apologize (thus admitting the conversation) because eu vassals were indignant about her disrespect ("fuck the eu!"). fun fact: those insults are intolerable! but that the us secretary of state and the us ambassador were deciding, all by themselves, the composition of new goverrnment to replace the legitimate government of a foreign country ... that apparently bothered no one.
> that is an unsubstantiated claim that's actually false and doesn't even preclude the right of any group of people in sufficient majority to exercise self-govern, by their mere will and manifestation,
There was no majority, no will, no manifestation. Only Russian soldiers and operatives cosplaying as "separatists" to carve off a piece of another country. It's waste of everyone's time to pursue this contrived narrative and try to shoehorn it into something seemingly real.
> that vote didn't reach the required 3/4 of the threshold required by the constitution for impeachment.
They didn't vote for impeachment, but to hold early elections. Impeachment is an American thing. European democracies replace failed governments through negotiations between parliamentary factions, and if they fail to form a new government or prefer to request a fresh mandate from the electorate, hold elections ahead of the regular schedule.
> yanukovich had allegedly relinquished his position, which actually means he had to flee the country for his life because of the threat of the nazi nationalists
Yanukovych fled the country after 108 protesters were killed and he was about to get criminally charged for his role in it. His political base of support collapsed overnight, as is evident from the unanimous vote of Ukrainian parliament to hold early elections: not even a single member of his own party voted in favor of Yanukovych. His desperate last-minute attempts to negotiate some deal to save his ass fell through and he ran.
>Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Wouldn't this theory predict that if NATO/USA becomes hostile to Ukraine, the invasion will cease? According to bawolff's worldview, Trump's foreign policy will address the root cause, no? They should be supporting Trump.
In my world view, yes, Ukraine firmly returning to the russian sphere of influence, perhaps even agreeing to become a puppet state of russia, would stop the invasion.
Of course Ukraine does not want that, hence war. Surrendering is always a way to gain peace, but most countries do not view such a peace as worth the cost.
Ultimately the war continues because USA is not the only western country in existence and the rest of the west is still willing to provide support sufficient for Ukraine to keep fighting.
This is an utterly naive take. Russia would in that case forcibly conscript from Ukraine's population for further westward invasions, which serves the purpose of exterminating the local male population to suppress resistance and make room for Russian settlers. We already saw this during the initial invasion in 2014 and the forcible conscription early in the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Russia's ambitions are laid out in the ultimatum presented in 2021.
Point 1: "The Russian Federation., the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine"
Point 4 of the Memorandum: "The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used."
US actions in the UN: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7435pnle0go "The US has twice sided with Russia in votes at the United Nations to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the Trump administration's change of stance on the war.
First, the US opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow's actions and supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity - voting the same way as Russia and countries including North Korea and Belarus at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
Then the US drafted and voted for a resolution at the UN Security Council which called for an end to the conflict, but contained no criticism of Russia."
The US has almost nothing to do (vote in the UN against Russia aggression), and yet did less than that. They can hide behind technicalities, but the truth is that Trump is acting like a Putin asset. For decades there has been a political fight in eastern Europe where the US projected power supporting governments that sympathized with western countries (enter NATO, enter UE, enter western markets, welcome western industries). US was winning the fight without shooting a bullet until Trump.
US has no official treaty with Israel (except the 10 year rolling aid), yet we would be shocked if suddenly an US government turn to support Israel neighbors and vote against them in the UN.
Are you a sophist? This thread is about how the US has lost all their political leverage, built for almost a century, since Trump got in power (no longer a trustable ally, losing contracts, etc).
You keep mixing up pre- and post-Trump events as if nothing happened, technicalities, "but you said X", and nobody that was trying to debate in good faith does that, only one interested in "winning" the argument but with zero interest in getting somewhere productive.
If something seems factually incorrect to me, I say so. If I notice a contradiction in someone's worldview, I point it out.
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, I'm an isolationist, and I don't care if the US loses leverage or whatever. If all US troops are booted from Europe so we can no longer "intervene" in the Middle East, that sounds fantastic. I favor a Swiss-style foreign policy for the USA.
From my perspective, it would actually be very good if Europe cut off the supply of AI chips to prevent AI companies from building an omnicidal doomsday machine:
The US never promised to protect Ukraine. It's often claimed that the Budapest Memorandum was a promise from the US to protect Ukraine, but this is misinformation. Read the memorandum for yourself if you don't believe me, it's not very long:
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...