“The Russians didn’t even have a military force CAPABLE of threatening Ukraine....” in 2021
—> that is incorrect - Russia absolutely HAD the forces to crush Ukraine pre-2022. It had 900K active troops vs Ukraine’s 196K and vastly more armor/aircraft.
The politico article you linked from Nov 2022 actually describes a NEW buildup starting lat Sep 2021 involving elite Ruski units like the 1st guards tank army. Thsi was a deliberate escalation, not weakness.
By Dec 2021, over 100K Russki troops were massed and the full invasion force was ready by Feb 2022 after months of preparation. This was strategic positioning for a quick strike and win.
“when we decided to bring Ukraine into NATO.”
What are you talking about? The USA didn’t “decide” to do this - Ukraine begged to be let in, but France and Germany rejected.
And in 2021, there was no question of them even raising a request, leave alone it being accepted.
No invitation of Membership action plan was issued in the year before FEb 2022.
ukraine only applied in september 2022 AFTER the invasion.
“Ukraine even had EU membership in reach before the war”
huh?? EU membership was far, far away - they were at least a decade away from fulfilling the criteria
“Tolerated our bullshit like coups anc CIA bases”
The 2014 Maidan wasn’t a US sponsored coup - on the contrary the US state department as caught completely off guard. Claims of US orchestration are Muscowite propaganda with no evidence.
As to CIA bases - no proof has been provided by Moscow even AFTER they conquered 26% of Ukraine in March 2022
Russia has troops along the Finish border, along the Baltic states borders, in Syria, Libya, Armenia, Belarus, Chechnya, they used to have folks in Venezuela, strategic forces that can’t really deploy (nuclear forces etc), and like us cannot surge all their people to one place in the spotlight that day.
You are wrong.
Had Russia been able to invade earlier after our ill advised NATO expansion move, they surely would have. Every day they wait meant we were pumping Ukraine up even more.
Russia FACTUALLY didn’t invade for 3.5 months because that is how long it took them to move the forces into position and call up reserves to be able to invade Ukraine. They did not have the ABILITY to invade prior to that.