This is just silly play of ironic smirks. The interests of key players in Europe are secured, some intra-Slavic conflicts have no importance for them.

Security isn't a thing that can be secured in an absolute sense, only a relative one.

For example, while the catastrophic ineptitude of the Russian forces at the start of their invasion has caused me to believe 80% of their nukes don't work any more, even just one nuke detonated as a HAEMP would destroy a continental-sized power grid — and the same visible signs of corruption that gave me the previous 80%, that also means there's a substantial chance at least one of the warheads ended up on the black market.

> The writing is on the wall for a while now, the only problem is that people talking about it are promptly labeled as not worthy of being listened

Exactly, did people forget Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014? Let's not be naive here.

Yup, this was the time to arm Ukraine. (or even in 2008 with Georgia).

The US did actually train Ukrainian troops after that. Eg https://www.newsweek.com/us-troops-prepare-ukraine-soldiers-...

Could more have been done? Probably, but effort was definitely put in.

If you compare what happened in 2022 to what happened in 2014, you could make the argument that basically nothing was done in 2014.

I had a friend who kept saying that we needed to do something back then, and kinda ignored him, and now looking back, it's depressing how right he was.

Nah, Ukraine improved it's ability to defend itself after 2014, leaving Russia the choice of accepting defeat or outright invasion. It chose invasion.

2 years before Russia invaded Ukraine, you had Obama quipping like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0IWe11RWOM