We had military there 8 years before Russia invaded.
Gee. I winder if “building up the country’s military capabilities” involved weapons?
My God. How stupid are you?
😂😂😂😂
UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said on Wednesday that the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Sweden had been investing in Ukraine and building up the country’s military capabilities before the start of the conflict in February 2022.
2014-2015, Ukraine negotiated a series of measures with Russia, France and Germany known as the Minsk Agreements aimed at a political resolution of conflict in Donbass. In February of this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that he told former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron that Kiev never intended to fulfill the Minsk Agreements. Merkel said that the deal had been merely an attempt to give Ukraine time to gain strength ahead of a full-scale military confrontation.
“We had military there 8 years before Russia invaded.
Gee. I winder if ‘building up the country’s military capabilities’ involved weapons? My God. How stupid are you?”
The conflict BEGAN at the end of February, 2014 when Russia went into Crimea and illegally annexed it a few weeks later (an annexation that is not recognized by any established international body); and when Russia fomented civil war in eastern Ukraine by sponsoring and arming separatist movements. Talk about proxy wars! Russia used the separatists — which it supported and armed — to wage war against Ukraine; even so much as inserting Russian troops into the fray (the so-called “Little Green Men”). Even then, Western aid to Ukraine was paltry, at best. This article addresses that:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-trump-biden-ukraine-military-aid-1.6371378
“2014-2015, Ukraine negotiated a series of measures with Russia, France and Germany known as the Minsk Agreements aimed at a political resolution of conflict in Donbass.”
That is well known. And they (Minsk I and Minsk II: Hereafter I refer to them simply as Minsk) were unworkable. In any event, Russia violated them at the outset, because Minsk affirmed Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, which Russia ignored completely. And, much more. Here’s a link to an article about Minsk:
https://cepa.org/article/dont-let-russia-fool-you-about-the-minsk-agreements/
“In February of this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that he told former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron that Kiev never intended to fulfill the Minsk Agreements.”
The only “sources” I’ve seen for that are from the avowed socialist sites “MRonline” and the World Socialist Web Site. Both of whom are very pro-Russia and viscerally anti-West.
“Merkel said that the deal had been merely an attempt to give Ukraine time to gain strength ahead of a full-scale military confrontation.”
She refuted that, saying her comments were taken out of context.
But, your wording is interesting: You are admitting — perhaps unwittingly — that Ukraine feared a “full-scale military confrontation.” If Ukraine sought to gain strength in the face of such a threat, can you blame it? Besides Russia’s two previous wars against Chechnya in the 1990s, in 2008 it had also invaded the sovereign nation of Georgia. Russia’s belligerence and aggression was a well-known fact (which is why former Soviet SSRs and Warsaw Pact members rushed to join NATO when they had the chance: They knew full well what Russia was all about, and they wanted protection from it). And Ukraine, which has a historical distrust of Russians, also knows what Russia is all about.