> with absolutely no provocation

This is false. NATO in 2008 invited Ukraine to join. This is the equivalent of Cuba inviting Russia to setup a military base on US borders. The US's reaction was to economically nuke Cuba.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

Comparing the Cuban missile crisis to now is mindblowing...why do people think it makes sense as a defense of Russia?

The USSR put missiles in Cuba, and got the US to agree not to invade and to withdraw missiles from eastern Europe.

We need to know about the parallel universe where the "NATO aggression" results in Russia agreeing not to invade Ukraine.

No, NATO didn't invite Ukraine to join. Ukraine wanted to join but NATO didn't reach unanimous decision to allow Ukraine to join. Back then Germany voted against Ukraine joining, out of consideration for Russias interests. Since then, there was no new movement for a NATO membership. And again, during the last minute diplomatic efforts, the German chancellor very clearly offered to Putin, that the question of an Ukrainian NATO membership would be decided quite far into the future. So there was no actual thread of a NATO membership - any claims of that were just a made-up reason by Putin. Also, while a lot of former Warshaw Pact countries did join the NATO, the NATO didn't install a permanent military presence in those countries.

> Also, while a lot of former Warshaw Pact countries did join the NATO, the NATO didn't install a permanent military presence in those countries.

Well, after those countries became NATO countries their own militaries were NATO militaries, so of course NATO has a permanent military presence in those countries. Unless they totally demilitarised.

> NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

This is on NATO's website from 2008 meeting. How is "welcomes" not be interpreted as an invitation?

Well, yes, it is an invitation. But NATO didn't let the Ukraine join, that was blocked by at least Germany. And on during his visit in Moscow, Chanceller Scholz basically offered Putin that Ukraine joining into NATO could be very far in an undetermined future.

The US did not invade Cuba...

Ok, there was the Bay of Pigs, but the US pulled out support at the last minute. Had they invaded Cuba we'd be using that as an example of where the US did the wrong thing by invading a sovereign country (there are other examples...FYI, I'm not American).

As I commented elsewhere, this is a 14 year old invitation.

> The resultant lack of food and medicine to Cuba contributed to the worst epidemic of neurological disease this century.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8942780/

We didn't take up arms, we just starved Cuba to death and didn't give them access to modern medicine.

Though I am aware of the blockade (I'm not American), I was not aware of the humanitarian crisis it caused.

The document you linked clearly states that the US now recognizes this was a mistake.

"The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States has informed the US Government that such activities violate international law and has requested that the US take immediate steps to exempt food and medicine from the embargo."

But your initial comment was if Ukraine provoked Russia, so you're going down a rabbit hole of history that has no bearing on this.

You think an embargo is a blockade is US policy?

The US agreed not to invade again and also remove missiles in Europe in return for the missiles being removed from Cuba.

That's conspicuously not what happened with Ukraine. It could not be more not what happened with Ukraine.

Cuba makes no sense as an argument about current events, and if it did, one could have a conversation without random whatabouts.

russia wanted to deploy forces in the USA's borders. USA wants to deploy forces on Russia's borders.

I don't see the difference.

Yes, I was working with your premise! The parallelism as you see/state it.

You don't see a difference in what caused the crisis, right, sure.

THEN what happened?

In both cases, there was precedent for violating sovereignty. Bay of Pigs with the US, and Crimea with Russia, among other things.

But the US agreed to not invade again, and Russia on the other hand...invaded.

You are not correct when you say “without provocation”. The UKR government had been assaulting its own ethnically-Russian citizens in Donbass four 8 years. Russia went in to stop that. There are many journalistic documents that prove those societies.

I'm not sure what to believe anymore, honestly. Certainly there has been military action between Kyiv and the separatists. But there's been so much anti-Ukraine propaganda coming out of Russia in the past 8 years, plus what seems to be questionable or incomplete reporting from Western outlets, that it's hard to know where the truth is.

Did the separatist movements start because of Russian agitation, or because of actions the government of Ukraine took? Is Ukraine targeting ethnic Russians in the Donbass region, or are they just attacking separatists, who maybe(?) happen to mostly be ethnic Russians? I'm having a hard time understanding the true history here.

Link to the documents? I appreciate we are getting differing stories depending on what media you see.