Not true. I think things could have been worked out far in advance of the fighting, but we did nothing to negotiate and allowed Russia to build their forces.
We wanted this war. There is no doubt about that.
Even if Ukraine wanted to negotiate we would not let them.
If you look at what Putin wanted, there was nothing to negotiate. He wanted the West to do to Ukraine what Britain and France did to Czechoslovakia. Also, like everything else we deal with today, the issue was never the issue. Putin got a huge popularity boost with the annexation of Crimea. He had an election coming up. At the last election there was significant unrest because anywhere from 129 percent to 150 percent of the registered population voted. He put down the protests, but they were a danger to him. If he bloodlessly won Ukraine, he’d be popular again. Therefore, he asked for things the West and Ukraine couldn’t give him. Thus, he established he was willing to negotiate, and the West was the cause of the war...which would take him only three days. But he was operating on bad information which is a danger when everyone you don’t like falls out of windows.
Sure, Ukrainians wanted to be slaves of Putin, except for some CIA mind control we pulled. Okay