Except that’s not what happened. They spent months building up troops repeatedly claiming it was just a military training exercise, denying they were building up to invade and that they had “no plans to invade Ukraine” until “whoops we invaded haha we were lying about the drills after all”
Yes they were making noise about nato as a pretense to Putin’s imperialism, because concern of nato is a farce. But they continually denied plans to invade.
This wasn’t very long ago. It was earlier this year, why are people getting details so wrong?
Are you seriously claiming that Russia didn't care if Ukraine was in NATO?
There are so many public statements from Russia before the invasion, about their red line and demands. Like you said, this was less than a year ago.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43334/nato-pushes-back...
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072413634/russia-nato-ukrain...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-delivers-response-to-russia...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-ukraine-putin-nato...
Sorry, that premise is crucially flawed. It requires believing the Russian government and taking what they say at face value. That’s frankly absurd. Don’t do it.
There is the saying “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
Russia is notorious for blatant lies and has been for decades.
Let’s review the facts just in the case of nato and Ukraine:
In January 2022 Russia’s top diplomat, Sergei lavrov, repeatedly and angrily denied Russia had plans to invaded despite massing 100k troops. A couple weeks later those same troops invaded Ukraine. That’s literally Russia’s government blatantly and obvious lying.
Next, Russia claims it was all about feeling threatened by Nato. Their solution was to do the action that was most likely to strengthen nato and has literally spurred countries like Sweden and Finland who had no previous intention of Joining nato to rush for membership. Russias noise about nato is a baseless pretense.
Did you know Russia literally imprisons people for calling their war in Ukraine a “war”? Russia doesn’t just lie, it criminalizes truth.
But sure be my guest, take Russian government statements at face value.
I absolutely believe that had NATO stayed out of Ukraine, Russia would not have invaded.
I don't have to trust what Russia says, the facts speak for themselves. NATO declared Ukraine will be part of NATO and troops were building on the boarder within months. They said it was a red line, it was crossed, and they invaded!
The US has been invading Russian allies for decades and now they are setting up shop in Eastern Europe. What would you think if you were in their shoes?
Russia Today and Sputnik are great info sources.
you’re welcome to take Russia reasoning at face value, we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether that makes sense.
Their red lines were just as much unserious jokes/farces similar to Sergei lavrov declaring to the world they had no intention of invading literally right before the start of invasion. Take them at face value, everyone has the right to make their own assessment.
But Putin knew invading would strengthen nato. He didn’t care. It was never about nato.
Simple bloodlust, conquest, and imperialism?
Do you see how one line of reasoning is consistent with rational actors and the other relies pathological boogeymen?
That’s part of it.
And yes Russia use twisted pretenses about nato and nazis as boogeyman quite a lot and it works wonders judging by the way this thread is going.
Has anyone analyzed "China's Final Warning" in contemporary times?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china%27s+final+warning&t=ffab&ia=...
This was far from the case with Russia and Ukraine. Russia mass at the borders and shouted for months that they would invade if their demands were not met. I would wager that most military invasions start with such Behavior opposed to denial and then a blitz.
I would instead look for escalatory rhetoric in China and Declarations of hard lines that would trigger invasion of Taiwan.