This notion Russia is justified in invading Ukraine is, to me, rather fantastical. The implication Russians will blame the US is the same. They know what's happened.
who said they were justified? where did you read the word justified? reading and comprehension, please. There is no scenario where any invasion of another country is justified. None. Invasion is the ultimate act of aggression and is a war crime.
Putin and Putin to alone is blame for his crimes. Having said that, the US has
arrogantly, recklessly and
stupidly been antagonizing the situation, and for no valid reason that I can see. I suggest you read up/listen to people
far smarter than you or I, and who have studied this topic ad nauseam. Professor John Mearsheimer, Professor Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Noam Chomsky, plenty of former CIA analysts, plenty of former US diplomats. So many different people of so many different backgrounds and political stripes- all in agreement on this.
Despite what you think- you are just
FACTUALLY wrong- as the US gov't officials at the highest levels made repeated
verbal assurances to Mikahil Gorbachev that NATO would not expand any further east if concessions were made for Germany to reunite. The same Germany that just 40 years prior to reunification invaded Gorbachev's country and completely destroyed it. This is documented many times on official records from declassified documents from 5 different governments. It's a matter of record and a matter of fact. It's all there to read in the declassified US, UK, West German, USSR, and French government documents. I've sent you think many times, it's from National Security archives of The George Washington University- there are 40+ actual documents where you can read them all for yourself. Not linking it again.
Bush II made the
disastrous attempt to force countries like Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, but thanks to the objections of France and Germany- the British were able to broker the deal to give those countries open ended "invitations". This was a
massive mistake to say the least. Even one of the biggest Anti-Russian hawks- Fiona Hill- who worked in the Bush II administration at the time- openly said it was the biggest mistake Bush II could've made and called it the absolute worst case scenario in interviews.
Things were pretty calm in Ukraine though and didn't go into
nuclear metldown until 2014, when an even stupider Obama administration thought it'd be a
great idea to get involved in the internal affairs of another country and back a coup of a democratically elected government and hand pick the replacement government- and pull Ukraine into US orbit and turn it into an effective US colony- which let's face it- it has been since 2014. The backstory and details of which are explained below:
https://spaceworms.substack.com/p/the-us-is-culpable-in-todays-ukraine?s=rPutin is to blame for his own war crimes and actions. US has thrown gasoline on the fire and are sacrificing Ukraine and trying to use it as a quasi-Afghanistan to "bleed the Russians". US does not give a
shit about Ukraine. US didn't let them into NATO after 14 years. US has a security agreement with Ukraine via 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Zelenskyy has asked the US repeatedly to come their aide via this agreement and US refuses. US isn't setting up No Fly Zones. When Sec of State Blinken "gave the green light to Poland to fly fighter jets" in Ukraine, Poland turned around and said "we'll donate them to you, you guys fly them in" and US said...."uh no, we can't do that....it's too risky for us".
US has been flooding the country for years with arms to support an insurgency while Ukraine gets destroyed and Russia gets bled in the process.