Putin obviously wants neutrality; he's said so, but as long as ethnic Russians get to be part of Russia, whether he would use Ukranian neutrality to stage another invasion, Rubio doesn't know that.
“Putin obviously wants neutrality; he’s said so,”
He also swore he would never invade Ukraine even as he was building up the invasion force.
“... but as long as ethnic Russians get to be part of Russia,”
Right, and the disastrous invasion of Kiev was just a feint. Lose half your army and mobilize the entire free world against you to simply distract from an escalation of a war you’re already in.
FFS, Kherson is only 13% Russian, almost identical to the Russian proportion of Kiev, so why did he claim to annex Kherson but disavow the intent to annex Kiev?
You call it using ethnic Russians to “stage” an invasion. The Azov and Right Sector nazi militias were shelling, murdering, conducting ethnic cleansing with prohibitions against laying flowers at cemetery and war memorials, legally banning the widely spoken Russian language, burning and banning Russian classic books and literature.
That wasn’t using them to stage an invasion. It was a legal response to ethnic cleansing in progress. And there was no war Russia is ever going to accept a Nazi memorializing Army right up to it’s border. The May before the invasion Zelinsky was even saying Ukraine needed to acquire nuclear weapons.
People act like this war is some grab all of Europe expansion, or some fight only explainable by Putin being a psychopath.
Until people recognize reality, they will remain lost.