> Self-determination and agency is only available to those who have the means to fight for it. Ukraine has none, it has whatever the nations providing 10s of billions in military aid allow it to have.
Self-determination and agency is available to those who have the will to fight for it. Clearly they do have the means to fight for it based on their ability to secure vast military support from the west.
Oh okay, it's just a coincidence that almost always get what they want and when they don't there's just coincidentally disaster.
Fascinating claim about a country that has been successfully resisting a Russian invasion for 3 months with predominantly locally-produced (and upgraded) weapons.
Nevertheless, if we steelman your argument and agree that Ukraine can never be truly self-determined and that it must choose between US or Russia, then not choosing a country that has done to Ukraine what the Russian Federation has been doing at least since 2003[1] seems favorable.
There's also the matter of centuries worth of historic memory of repression and subjugation, tortures, rapes, murders, man-made famines, forced mass deportations, etc. perpetrated by Russian autocrats and dictators. And now, quite alarmingly, we are seeing Stalinist-style atrocities being committed in 2022[2,3]. With this in mind, falling under Russian occupation is the worst case scenario for Ukraine and Ukrainians.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tuzla_Island_conflict 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_filtration_camps 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
Self-determination and agency is only available to those who have the means to fight for it. Ukraine has none, it has whatever the nations providing 10s of billions in military aid allow it to have.
Wishing for a fair world does not make it so.