this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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Please elaborate how exactly the "significant portion of the blame" for the US comes to be. Also please explain how attributing "significant portion of the blame" to the US does at least not partially "excuse" Russia.
And while you are at it, please explain how the Russian regime that openly states that its ambition is the destruction of the Ukranian nation (which amounts to genocide) and is also engaging towards this goal in the areas it occupies, is merely equally as bad or as much of a threat (or even less so) in the Ukranian context as the US regime.
Post cold war understanding was that there was going to be a buffer zone between Russia and Nato. Ukraine being brought into Nato or the EU was a known line in the sand that the US crossed. Does that absolve Russia of their aggression? No it does not. But it is like with Pearl Harbor, the US blockade of Japan provoked them to attack. Does not absolve Japan, but the idea they attacked purely out of their own aggression is false.
What gives the country Russia the right or privilege to force a "buffer zone" on entire other nations again, or rather, them into Russian vassalage?
Never mind that Ukraine was neither in the process of joining NATO or the EU. Both were very unrealistic prospects in 2014 during the first invasion as well as in 2022 at the 2nd invasion. Who joins the EU is outside of US control, quite plainly and the joining NATO could be prevented by sympathetic governments within NATO if it were a thing to begin with (Even Sweden's bid was delayed substantially by Hungary/Turkey and that was a far less controversial case).
Indeed if keeping Ukraine out of NATO and EU had been the aim, that would have been far more effective and billions of Euros cheaper too, never mind about a few hundred thousand able and young Russians still being alive and productive instead of in a grave. On top of it all, if NATO enlargement was the aim, what good did an invasion do again that directly caused NATO enlargement multiplying the direct NATO-Russian border? Its all very irrational indeed. The arguments don't fit together, if we assume Russia is a rational actor.
The way I see it, Russia did not attack because of what the US did, it attacked because of what Ukrainians did but I know, that does not fit into the narrative that Russians like to believe in themselves. It also does not fit into the imperialist world view in which only the imperial capital can have agency or legitimacy. Maidan was a mass movement. The US might have been supportive but it was not really within their control either to secure the survival of the old Russian controlled regime. This has never been about the fear towards the US or NATO. It has always been about the ambition to rebuilt the Russian empire that was lost to the collapse of the Soviet Union which also lost because it collapsed under its own weight, not because of foreign intervention.
And because of that I find it hard to see the blame on the US, as that aim of reestablishing Empire and regain control of lost realms was independent from anything the US has done. It is an ambition that is deeply rooted not only in Putin but wide parts of the Russian elite as well.
I am saying that when treaties and assurances are ignored you risk war. That is the case here.
Edit: here the receipts: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
US secretary of state gave verbal assurances in 1990 that were abandoned later.
There is no source for any treaty violated in there. So why do you talk about "treaties and assurances" then? That is highly misleading. There were assurances made verbally during negotiations that were never substantiated, ie never agreed on in a treaty or even a summit statement. Those were assurances of intent in that moment that were also correct at the time but never promises that the position will never chance even under dramatically different circumstanced a decade later.
NATO expansion happened in 1999 and 2004, based on the strong sovereign decision of the joining nations. Unlike with the Warsaw pact no country was coerced into it and Russia did not make a big deal out of it either, at the time. To consider that an assault against Russia requires a solidly imperialist world view where sovereign nations have no right of self determination and self defense.
Interestingly Russia's actions that were obviously no reaction to something happening 10 years earlier but what had happened the same year, internally because of the will of the people in Ukraine, not anything in the US, vindicated all those countries that joined in their decision. Russia was never afraid of NATO as threat but rather as a force that could make recolonisation of its former colonies impossible.
Because the assurance was the basis for the treaty negotiations that followed. You can say that doesn't not justify aggression, and I would agree. But to say assurances have no bearing in the matter is materially false
No I am challenging your basic premise. If you want to get some epically huge guarantees that all former Warsaw Pact countries will be denied the sovereign decision to join NATO for eternity. You'd demand at the very least to have that recorded in summit press notes but rather in some treaty, the way you made it look like innitially, it was done but it wasn't - not at all.
The assurances further never were guarantees for the distant future. They were assurances during negotiations for and in the context of sudden German unification. Context matters and wording does too. Unless you are of course claiming that Russian leaders and diplomats are stupid and clueless.
If Russia considered those odd verbal assurances made in completely different circumstances that was missing from each and every agreement Russia has made with anyone, one would have expected that they had made some major fuss about the NATO expansion when it actually happened. They didn't.
It just feels very forced of an argument something that was not only never repeated, also not in treaties after 1990, where that could have been done. But the second the Russian regime loses control over Ukraine, not because of what NATO has done but because it lost power in Ukraine to the people of Ukraine.
The simple question if those mentioned verbal assurances during a few negotiations in 1990, were of any significance in 2014 when Russia decided to break a number of binding treaties and invade a neighbour country it was contractually obliged to protect, is the following. Would Russia have acted in any way differently in 2014 if those verbal assurances in 1990 had never occured? I dare to say no, not at all. Russia would have done the very same thing under Putin because it was never about NATO or assurances, it was about losing control of Ukraine to the Ukrainian people and Putin could not accept that. If it makes no difference it is also of no significance.
You mean like the assurance that russia isn't going to invade Ukraine? The one that was made multiple times in different agreements and broken every time? That one?
Edit: since you prefer this form of discussion, sure. Why should anyone keep any promises or assurances made to russia when they clearly never intended to keep any of their own?
Which treaty or assurance was violated? The one about protecting Ukraine and guaranteeing its territorial integrity?
And unless you disagree with my position above, Russia intended to maintain control over Ukraine, no matter what. In that case the war was a consequence of Ukrainians demanding control over their own government, not anything the US has done. If that is so, how can you attribute significant blame on something that played no role in the decision over the aggression?