Due to our meddling, Ukraine was not independent. They were all tangled up with our corrupt as hell government and firmly in our camp. If they were actually independent, this war would never have happened.
That is all the past. There is a war. Ukraine is winning on the battlefield and Russia is being destroyed by the international community.
What was is now irrelevnt
Ukraine was independent.
This war happened precisely because it was independent - and Putin doesn’t see it as a “legitimate country”