I would add that the unspecifity of the threat was what kept Putin going.

Consider what would have happened if "The West" handed Putin a detailed list of the sanctions that are in effect now A WEEK AGO.

Lower costs and lower risks. That's why far-sighted politics are so important.

This is a good point but: (1) what happened was considered unthinkable by many, (2) the wold has changed which allowed those sanctions and (3) the idea was not to 'rock the boat' and saying if you do this we will do that could have allowed for the Russian side to plan better playing into their hands and might have encouraged them to start a war.

So this is easy to say now, but I don't think there would have been any takers for this three weeks ago when for instance Germany was still firmly in the mistaken mindset that all of this is so unlikely that they don't need to prepare for it at all.

He wouldn't have believed the list. Just like a lot of Europeans didn't believe he would invade Ukraine.

> Consider what would have happened if "The West" handed Putin a detailed list of the sanctions that are in effect now A WEEK AGO.

Putin would say that is why he attacked Ukraine. His cheerleads would then blame Biden, claiming Putin had no choice.

Doesn't make sense to me. It's a simple If-This-Then-That logic. The sanctions only take place once he invades. If there's no invasion of course there are no sanctions.

Consider that he has own logic of: if they present us with possible sanctions, it's considered aggression, so we attack, else they are weak, so we attack.

Putin had already been setting up the Russian economy in a way so as to minimize the impact of sanctions.

We talked, but what concessions did we make?

You mean concessions like giving up security guarantees for all Eastern European NATO countries and completely giving up any support for the sovereignty of Ukraine, allowing Russia to dictate to Ukraine which alliances they can choose?

Because these were literally Russia's ridiculous "demands".

From the start, if we think in realpolitical terms, we let him effectively keep Crimea and Donbas/Luhansk without giving the Ukraine material support to take them back, out of the fear of pouring fuel into the fire.

Putin had demands that were de facto impossible to fulfill, they read as if the US/European governments had power over e.g. the desires of the inhabitants of the Baltic states. They all wanted into the EU/NATO after the Cold War for reasons that aren't hard to empathize with.

In a security-political sense, making concessions that impact your weakest allies is a surefire way to destabilize your own alliance.

Also, why do we have to make concessions in terms of Ukraine and guaranteeing that Ukraine won't join EU/NATO? Putin should have been talking to Ukraine about that and giving concessions to Ukraine in exchange for staving off any alliance memberships - but it's now clear why he didn't.

Are you seriously suggesting that the problem with Western policy towards Russia is that we didn’t appease Putin enough? That is, to say the least, a weird take.

I mean, it's exactly the take of the Russian government and it's various Western propaganda repeaters, so it's rather common.

Common, sure, but that doesn't make the "take" itself any less weird.

The only weird thing is that so many Westerners thoughtlessly regurgitate it.

From the list of Putin's demands, what should the West has conceded on??

Not necessarily Putin's demands, but there's talk of Russia asking to join NATO way-back-when: not sure if those are trustworthy, but I am pretty confident Russia would have no fear of NATO if it was not sent off, and was instead part of it.

Also, recognizing independence for Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine would have helped with the current situation too.

> Not necessarily Putin's demands, but there's talk of Russia asking to join NATO way-back-when

Putin wanted to skip the readiness steps applied to aspiring members and just be jumped in. Readiness is quite important, because NATO doesn't work by voting but consensus/unanimity.

> but I am pretty confident Russia would have no fear of NATO if it was not sent off

They weren't sent off, they were admitted to the Partnership for Peace (the onboarding path for membership) before Putin even came into office, and never formally pursued anything farther, Putin specifically indicating that he found applying the accession process used for aspiring members to Russia rather than a direct invitation for full membership improper.

> Also, recognizing independence for Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine would have helped with the current situation too.

Would it? How? Would it stopped Putin from escalating attacks from those areas and then claiming that attacks on them, combined with the historical “fact” that Ukraine was an unjustly created entity ripped from Russian territory, justified the invasion of the rest? How does that work?

Yeah. I've seen a decent article recently (it's in Russian though) about Russia/NATO talks in the 90s. The felling from 'our' side seems to go like this: we tried to get into NATO or at least prevent them from moving close to our borders, but the NATO paper pushers were afraid of losing their jobs and knocked up a threat when there were none.

https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2022/02/02/natokatstvo

Edit: actually, I think the google translate version is plenty readable.

https://novayagazeta-ru.translate.goog/articles/2022/02/02/n...

This is of the main guys who did the talking in the 90s, so you might want to have a gander at it.

> recognizing independence for Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine would have helped with the current situation too.

So what you're saying is that these states in question don't deserve the right to self-sovereignity. The people in the independent states wanted in NATO and not the other way around.

"Russia has no fear of NATO" => "Putin takes Baltic states".

Well, Russia being part of NATO and what the consequences are... I guess we'll never know.

What would happen if NATO seriously offered to take both Ukraine and Russia as members TODAY?

NATO would have become a dysfunctional organization. It is not about the Russian fear of NATO. Russian political system cannot get over its loss of an empire, despite us living in the XXI century. It's entirely different root of the problem..

Eastern and Western Europe would have been crazy to gamble everything on the hope that admitting Russia to NATO somehow neutralizes Russia, not NATO.

NATO exists because of Russia/USSR's bad behavior.