Western polling agencies almost immediately repeated the polls carried out in Crimea, presumably to debunk them, yet found the exact same numbers as Russia recognized. [1] Russia observed a 97% yes vote with an 83% turnout, so ~82% "yes" if we assume the people who didn't vote would all have voted no. Gallup found in their poll that ~83% of Crimeans felt that the vote "reflected the views of the people."
Some don't seem to know that Crimea has always been majority ethnic Russian in modern history. And before that it was majority Tatar (with Tatarstan now a republic of Russia). Crimea has never been Ukrainian, by ethnicity, ever. We're looking at escalating towards WW3 over something most people cheer on while having absolutely zero knowledge of even the basic facts, thanks to our stupid "information warfare."
[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-a...
Imagine if the January 6th riots somehow actually did end up driving e.g. Biden out of office. Would states that were aligned with Biden (and opposed to Trump) not thusly have the right to refuse to acknowledge the new government and declare their independence? It seems like a heck of a good reason to me!
That Russia did not managed in 2014 to threaten Ukraine away from western direction is what happened. Russia treated Ujrainian president not to sigh EU membership, Ukrainians revolted. Not an USA coup. And prites against specific rejection of democracy bt president.
Ukraine did not became Belarus in 2014 due to protests which were against Russian meddling. USA proteats were trying to impose autocracy.
Imagine this in a parallel world in the US. Where the US is a relatively weak, impoverished, and deeply corrupt nation. And the speaker was from ostensibly the most powerful nation in the world. You'd have brought out every anti-government individual in the country, all with that twinkle of violence in their eyes. Which is exactly what happened.
I don't really think we would have taken these steps if we felt that the protests would have played out as desired without our meddling, because it ruins even the perception of independence. It was just another in the endless line of long US driven coups. That's not to say the Ukrainian people (particularly of Western Ukraine) were happy. But there's a dramatic difference between dissatisfaction, even to the point of occasionally violent protest, and an actual successful insurrection.
Meanwhile, some EU politicians says words of support. Well, in this case, EU is good and Russia is still meddling into USA politics.
As for impoverished nations, being in Russia world is becoming more like Belarus or Chechenya. Or more like poor regions of Russia itself. The countries that joined EU are waaay better off then Russia puppet states.
And now the US is happy to push this Civil War to the brink of World War over what would have otherwise been a relatively inconsequential border war. And I think Einstein's quote is quite apt, "I do not know what weapons WW3 will be fought with, but I do know that WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones."
It's all about as brilliant as WW1 where a Bosnian Serb assassinates an Austro-Hungarian royal and the next thing you know Brits are killing Germans over it, and tens of millions die. And the icing on the cake is the ethnic issues that drove those initial events still exist, more than 100 years later.
That they would still be participating in this deal is even worse.