Earlier you accused Russia of meddling everywhere, just to pull Ukraine out of the hat.
Completely omitting that Ukraine didn't start with Crimea, it started on Euromaidan [0], with heavy involvement of "Yat's our man" [1] and even that was only the ultimate result of decades, and millions of US$, in "regime change" efforts [2].
That's the actual context of Ukraine and not "Russia having ambitions to invade all of Europe". The annexation of Crimea wasn't an offensive play, it was a desperate defensive play trying to hold to as much ground and, and military industrial infrastructure [3], as possible.
The way all of this is constantly omitted, in favor of the "Russia just went into aggressive expansionist mode" narrative, is pretty good evidence for how one-sided this whole topic has become in the public discourse.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[1] http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners (Originally he was the face of the org, they later replaced him with his wife)
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
[3] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-military-equipment/25...
As Ukraine was a part of USSR, there are people sympathising with the West and people sympathising with Russia. And when one part comes to power, other feels disappointed.
Russia uses this distrust in its propaganda to divide the society, spreading ideas like the Ukranian government is going to ban Russian language at public schools and sadly the government doesn't take steps to reassure Russian people in Ukraine. Russian is not an official language in Ukraine or in any of its regions (except the annexed ones).
Your point about annexation of Crimea is similar to what Russian propaganda says: if we didn't take a part of Ukraine then there would be new NATO bases (another excuse: "Crimea has always been our land and people living there are mostly Russian"). But it is nothing more than an excuse - you can justify anything this way. USSR earlier did similar things - in 1939 they annexed a part of Finland [1] using an excuse that the Leningrad city was too close too the border so they needed to push the border further.
It is like US foreign policy - they always have a good excuse to bomb some country and pretend to be the good guy saving people from a dictator.
It was a bit more complicated and chaotic than that, but you can't just brush aside US involvement as "inconsequential" like that because Euromaidan saw literal US Senators (McCain), and many other foreign nationals, interfere in the elections.
In times where every random Russian doing something remotely shady in the US is instantly connected to the Russian government as some kind of "professional agitator" this whole reasoning seems quite a bit hypocrite.
> It is like US foreign policy - they always have a good excuse to bomb some country and pretend to be the good guy saving people from a dictator.
It indeed is, that's why many people think the US is in no position to be hysterical about "election interference".
The cold war might have officially been over, but spheres of influence, and the mostly covert fight over them, still exist and persists to this day.
In that context, it's a bit like the US playing the game all the time and mostly winning, but as soon as Russia manages to win a round, the US starts complaining how evil Russia is for playing the game in the first place.
killing a dissident abroad isn't a major blow in any real terms. it grabs headlines, but nobody is willing to disrupt world order over a small number of people, so it isn't even a big risk. russia was not trying to kill whoever because they thought it would be a massive geopolitical gain in any event.
ukraine is an example of how they cannot invade. ukraine's military had extremely low levels of readiness, yet they still hold most of their country. remember, russia views ukraine as its backyard. ukraine was its puppet state for most of the post-soviet era. the idea that ukraine pulled away -- toward the US -- warranted a full court press, but they couldn't hack it. they lost ukraine to the US orbit despite their best efforts.
imagine what luck they'd have against a western european military, backed by the rest of NATO. it isn't anything they'd even consider attempting because they are not suicidal.
one of their last military readiness estimates found that their black sea fleet couldn't hold out for more than eight hours against the US in a war, and that's right in their back yard, far from core NATO territory.
i just really want to drive the point home here: the russian military did not even supply all of their army units with socks (!) until the end of 2013 (!). they used the same footwraps they had used for hundreds of years up through that point. their military is strong, but their ability to project force is nowhere near what it was during the soviet era for a plethora of reasons.
moldova may be up next for annexing, but that doesn't imply european security is threatened, nevermind US security.
“One of” is a key phrase here, because...
> all of the international relations theorism that has been dominant in the last 70 years says that for every inch they gain, we must lose an inch, and vice versa.
...this is not true in a situation where Russia is one of our geopolitical rivals, only where they are sole meaningful rival. That arguably was the model of the early Cold War (prior to the significant split between China and Russia), but bilateral relations with Russia are not zero-sum when we have other geopolitical rivalries.
> no major player is about to risk trying to grab a mile or inflicting any kind of serious blow that could be overtly attributed to them as an act warranting retribution.
That's manifestly false; Russia has fairly brazenly conducted several such acts recently against members of the Western Alliance. (Particularly Brittain of a new objective and 8.)
> implying russia could invade europe or something similar
In what continent does one find Ukraine?
> was ridiculous at the time, and has been proven false given the difficulty that russia has had in ukraine.
You mean, was correct at the time and has been proven true by Russia's invasion of the Ukraine and conquest of significant portions thereof.