“ Everything done by Putin in this conflict is reasoned, rational and either clearly legal under international law or clearly defensible….”
What a bunch of balderdash.
U.S. foreign policy is far from perfect, and we propped up way too many stupid regimes in our history, but make no mistake: we NEVER annexed a territory as a result of a referendum taken while our troops were present on that territory’s soil.
For Putin’s actions to be reasonable, he should not have invaded but rather waited until those regions voted first independence and then requested Russian protection. That did not happen.
Of course not. We hold a free and fair election and install our puppet, put in the guys we want to support him and it's off to the races. No need to annex territory when you own the guys who run it as your proxy.
With Hawaii, we didn't even bother with a referendum; we simply surrounded Queen Liliuokalani's palace with Marines and told her that she wasn't in charge anymore.
These regions actually already had had a referendum but Ukraine refused to honor it, and furthermore kept harassing the population of the area (remember the Azov Brigades?). It was basically Biden who whipped up the situation with some rambling words about NATO - and while he was the first one to casually toss out a few words about WWIII, I swear he did it by accident.
Biden had been involved with Ukraine for years, and it was considered Europe’s most corrupt country. Biden was the one who engineered Zelensky’s becoming president of the country, and the one who has been feeding this ever-hungry former TV comedian with billions and billions of our dollars to keep this bloody farce going.
we didn’t have a referendum in the northern third of mexico we took?