Provocation: Letting Ukraine voluntarily choose closer ties with the West

Not Provocation: Invading and annexing the Crimea

Gotcha.

Also, since when is the US State Department in charge of the EU?

Ukraine should have been quietly told that joining NATO or the EU was not possible.

>Not Provocation: Invading and annexing the Crimea

Strawman: This.

What Russia did is absolutely wrong IMO, but it is expected (just like the US doesn't like anyone else messing with South America or the Caribbean).

>Also, since when is the US State Department in charge of the EU?

The US has been the primary power in Western Europe since the 8th of May 1945. The US can directly control who enters NATO, and wields significant influence over the primary EU members. The possibility of Ukraine joining NATO or the EU would have gone through State and should have been firmly rejected.

EDIT: Downvotes and no replies, I can't tell whether I am on Hacker News or reddit.

Nations have a right of self-determination. Russia and USA can argue for their interests, but if USA and Russia agree "oh, country X will be in your sphere of influence" without giving country X a voice and a veto-vote there - that is evil and insulting to people living in those nations, just as Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement before WW2.

Such divisions should be unacceptable to the global community.

Putin probably remembers his history. In World War II, Germany nearly overran Russia, and it started from the middle of Poland. If it had been able to start from the eastern border of Ukraine, Russia might well have not survived.

So Putin may feel, historically, that Russia's survival is at stake if Ukraine joins NATO. (I am not saying that Putin's desire to control Ukraine is moral or ethical. I am merely saying that it is understandable.)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/bolivia-angered-by...

Practically: Because that is the way the world actually works. If you've got a big power like Russia, with a leader that is willing to use that power, then your choices have consequences. You'd better think about those consequences when you're making your choices.

[Edit: If you're a neighbor to a big power like Russia, then your choices have consequences. The point was not that Russia's choices have consequences, but that Ukraine's do.)

Do you see any armies marching to protect Ukraine's territorial integrity? Russia isn't a small state that can be easily threatened, and nobody in the West has the stomach for a real war. I bet Russia could take all of Ukraine with no response beyond a boycott and some air-strikes.

P.S. The US has done far worse things than what Russia is currently doing in order to keep South America and the Caribbean within their sphere of influence. Small neighbours of great powers seldom get to exercise real independence.

If we followed your ideas, the Baltic states would never have broken away from Russia. That actually worked out quite well for them.