In 2014 Ukraine, great power gamesmanship, righteous anger at a corrupt status quo, and opportunistic far-right extremists toppled the government in the Maidan Revolution. Today’s crisis in Ukraine can’t be understood without understanding Maidan.
Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, and in return Ukraine gave up their nuclear deterrent.
The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance,[3] prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, “except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons
Are you going to argue that Russia is acting in self defense?
Edit
From the article
tensions more broadly, at the heart of the Maidan protests was the push by some Western governments, especially the United States, to isolate Russia by supporting the integration of peripheral parts of the former Soviet Union into European and Atlantic institutions
This implies Ukraine and others have no sovereignty and are just vassel states of the US. This is deliberate backwards thinking and patently false. Yes, the West will support and encourage democracies, so what? You’d rather we didn’t?
We, the West, have done enough shameful things in the middle east, supporting Ukraine is the polar opposite.
On 4 March the Russian president Vladimir Putin replied to a question on the violation of the Budapest Memorandum, describing the current Ukrainian situation as a revolution: “a new state arises, but with this state and in respect to this state, we have not signed any obligatory documents”.[32] Russia stated that it had never been under obligation to “force any part of Ukraine’s civilian population to stay in Ukraine against its will”. Russia suggested that the US was in violation of the Budapest Memorandum and described the Euromaidan as a US-instigated coup.
That’s your level of proof, because Putin said so?
I don’t know you, but I’m being forced to pay more taxes and the inflation caused by the economic sanctions to support this puppet regime that bans all opposition, forces people to die on the battlefield and doesn’t let people leave the country.
Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, and in return Ukraine gave up their nuclear deterrent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Are you going to argue that Russia is acting in self defense?
Edit
From the article
This implies Ukraine and others have no sovereignty and are just vassel states of the US. This is deliberate backwards thinking and patently false. Yes, the West will support and encourage democracies, so what? You’d rather we didn’t?
We, the West, have done enough shameful things in the middle east, supporting Ukraine is the polar opposite.
The Budapest Memorandum was violated and therefore nullified before 2014. It literally says that in your wikipedia article
That’s your level of proof, because Putin said so?
Where does it says so? Can you point to that specific section of the text? I’ve just checked and must have missed it, it wasn’t there.
It seems like both regimes violated their treaties: Kiev Violates Minsk Agreement Causing Fighting To Resume In Ukraine. There was also an oral treaty that talked about eastern expansion of NATO (which some call “a terrorist organization”), but it wasn’t written, as far as I know. The USA also acted in “self-defense” against many countries, nearly 400 according to Wikipedia.
Also, why does Russia not have loads of troops near the border with Finland?
Surely, if NATO is such a threat. Why?
I don’t know you, but I’m being forced to pay more taxes and the inflation caused by the economic sanctions to support this puppet regime that bans all opposition, forces people to die on the battlefield and doesn’t let people leave the country.
Whataboutism. Internal conflicts are internal matters for sovereign nations.
There was no oral treaty. Russia never asked for anything to be enshrined in an agreement. Don’t ask, don’t get.
And anyone is free to join NATO, Russia tried to after all.
https://www.military.com/history/russia-once-tried-join-nato-alliance-formed-counter-threats-russia.html
“Oral treaty”, oral international treaty… now that sounds like a heavily manipulative level of naivety.
It’s the Russian narrative