Yes of course

Lol in your dreams pal, let’s try Russia withdrawing all its troops, apologizing, and paying war reparations and see what follows

The pope and Chomsky already did blame nato

Yeah, in their usual “both sides are bad” way. The Pope has a good reason to, as the Vatican really tries to stay as neutral as possible for humanitarian reasons. Chomsky is just being an edgy windbag per usual

It was obvious for decades, Biden was joking about it in 97. Being nato to close to Russia’s door is going to provoke a conflict. Was Biden captain obvious or ahead of his time? Lol jk yea Chomsky’s looking rough, old as sin

Bringing*

Those who blame NATO expansion have it wrong. NATO expanded for decades and Russia didn’t do a thing.

The cause of the war is Putin’s discomfort with Ukraine’s democratization. The Maidan Revolution in 2014 kicked it off with the annexation of Crimea and 2022 is the next chapter.

It’s a country’s right to choose its own alliance and its own political system. All Russia has to offer is thuggery and intimidation. It is understandable that most Eastern European nations ran the other way.

They agreed not to expand and double the nations, 2004 and 2014 didn’t help plus the donbass shelling after. When you have countries and ngo’s helping to overthrow a government, it doesn’t seem much of a democracy when then and lately he got rid of many of his oppositions and clamping down on pro Russians within ukr.

ukr and ethnic Russians in the same nation and the history really adds to the predicament. Also considering their history as one and separate

2004 and then donbass conflict for years after really didn’t help at all with 14 000 kill. Zel did try to stop it and hold up the Minsk agreement but was pretty much told to f**k off and eventually played ball. Zel has to deal with far right groups integrated with gov, police and military. It’s not just azov but many groups.

Did you ever watch Ukraine on fire or Ukraine crisis documentaries? In the end I really don’t care but still approach understanding both sides and consider their historical relations and issues. They are both corrupt and do dumb shit that doesn’t help themselves but previous foreign interest and arms dealing really doesn’t help either

Ukraine is at the crossroads of a lot of different ideologies and trends - its name in Russian "Ukraina" literally means "borderland." Complicated place. Russia views it as its historical stomping-grounds, and at the same time, Ukrainians over centuries have held onto a unique identity. (Zelensky himself is a native Russian speaker, but that obviously didn't translate into automatic pro-Russian sympathy.)

Countries that are in the process of democratizing always have a certain level of corruption. Heck, almost all governments have corruption. Certainly the U.S. does. Heavy Russian-backed influence in Ukraine's politics doesn't help matters. Russia's own system is tremendously more corrupt by orders of magnitude - basically all wealth and power has been consolidated into and flows through Putin and his allies. Gotta grade Ukraine on a curve on this aspect, given its context.

People are quick to treat this as an East-vs.-West situation. I think that plays into Putin's framework. What the last few months have shown is that Ukrainian people, themselves, have their own agency, and they've chosen overwhelmingly to resist Russia. Western arms and aid flooding into Ukraine right now isn't some kind of nefarious attempt to dominate Ukraine from the West, it's what their government has asked for to defend its sovereignty.