It is being simplistic to automatically condemn Russia for its attack in Ukraine. There have been ongoing attacks in Ukraine since the coup in Kiev February 2014 that forced legitimately elected Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country. A coup that brought neo Nazi's into the post coup government in Kiev.
Subsequently the post coup government began military attacks on the two breakaway areas in eastern Ukraine Donetsk and Lugansk which refused to accept the post coup government in Kiev which among other things banned the Russian language in Ukraine which most of the people in eastern Ukraine spoke. These unprovoked attacks by the Ukraine government have continued the last eight years.
Russia has continually said the Minsk agreements of 2014-15 which the Ukraine government agreed to reconcile with the two breakaway areas were never implemented by Kiev.
Russia continually rejected the breakaway regions be admitted to the Russian Federation saying they were part of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin continually warned diplomacy was at a standstill regarding the Minsk agreements and Russia's core security concerns were being ignored by the US, NATO and the EU.
So in December 2021 Putin put in writing a document sent to the US and NATO listing Russia's core security concerns i.e. the unacceptability of further NATO expansion eastward, in particular Ukraine and Georgia, the placing of advanced weapons systems in Ukraine that threaten Russia and Russia wanting written guarantees from the US its core security concerns would be honored.
Subsequently the US did respond in writing but essentially dismissed the Russian security concerns falsely claiming NATO is strictly a defensive entity and Ukraine could in the future request membership in NATO.
Putin in a January address to the Russian people said Russia had been lied to by the US when the verbal agreement in 1989 between then Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and the Sr. Bush government not to expand "one inch" eastward if the two Germany's were allowed to reunite. This agreement was first reneged on by President Bill Clinton in 1997, the "Dubya" Bush, Barack Obama and finally Trump.
Then incredibly US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview there had been no agreement by the US not expand NATO eastward yet previously secret documents declassified in 1997 revealed there was such an agreement.
I believe the final straw for Putin was when Ukraine President Zelensky informed the Munich Security Conference in January his desire to acquire nuclear weapons.
So on February 24 Putin having been ignored and Russia's security concerns dismissed out of hand by the US, acted attacking Ukraine's military infrastructure..
Predictably Putin and Russia have been condemned by the US, NATO and the EU with new harsh sanctions, the Nord Stream II gas pipeline put on indefinite hold by the German government, Russia removed from the SWIFT financial network and labeling Putin as the new Hitler.
To date Russia's military campaign in Ukraine continues though there have been two diplomatic meetings between representatives of Ukraine and Russia in Belarus and Poland to end the war but as yet to no avail.
I believe in part this is the new reality:
Putin will act decisively taking military action when Russia's core security concerns are dismissed out of hand.
The US will not engage Russia militarily in Ukraine.
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