Look, after 2014 Ukraine was being turned into a de facto member of NATO. NATO trained and armed the UFA and conducted military exercises with the UFA. NATO also integrated the UFA into its command and control system. About all that was missing was the deployment of NATO troops and an Article 5 guarantee.
“Look, after 2014 Ukraine was being turned into a de facto member of NATO. NATO trained and armed the UFA and conducted military exercises with the UFA. NATO also integrated the UFA into its command and control system. About all that was missing was the deployment of NATO troops and an Article 5 guarantee.”
I think we’re on the same page. The Neocons, through NATO, tried to be a bit too ‘cute’ here. They figured they could arm-up Ukraine and make them a defacto member of NATO, without actually adding them to NATO, in order to get Donbass back (which would have happened last Spring had Russia not gotten in their way).
At that point, there were two more things to do - and I don’t know the order of it:
1) Get Crimea back
2) Make Ukraine a formal member of NATO
And with NATO comes NATO bases and front line troops, probably TONS of them. And so Russia has to respond to having a huge, hostile, border, and that’s very expensive.
In fact, that was our China strategy during the Cold War - help China be a threat to Soviet Union, so that the Soviets would be ‘weakened’ by having a huge force tied-down.