I've been asking the same questions and making the same arguments since before this war even began and the warmongers have never had any answer to them but to try to silence people or scream disinformation. We backed and micromanaged a color revolution in Ukraine in 2014 that overthrew a relatively stable and legitimate democracy and replaced it with a puppet state, sparking the war. We tried to seize a country that had been in Russia's sphere of influence since the time of Catherine the Great. We were unwilling from all of 2014 to 2021 and now in 2025 to invest the direct military strength required to hold our ill-gotten gains, but Russia was absolutely willing to intervene directly to secure its own back yard. American politics at the highest level were infected by the pernicious whims of ukrainian ultranationalists who led their people to a self-destructive civil war, zealots who hated Russia enough they'd fight to their own deaths rather than live under Putin's grip.
At every step this war was predictable and explicable. And even now with the end plain to see, the neoliberal world still wants to live in their alternative facts bubble and act like Trump is saying that water is dry and fire is cold when he says Ukraine never should have started this war. And its just fitting that he's simply sidelining and ignoring them. Russia held a showcase of all the progress made in rebuilding Mariupol and the EU banned it from being displayed. The EU held a summit with the "mayor in exile" of Mariupol and discussed how they would finance the reconstruction of a city they don't hold, by someone who will never govern it, with money they don't have. Trump is letting them LARP all they want in Paris right now while he goes out and earns that Nobel prize that he'll never get
It's kind of like the EU claiming they're going to give Ukraine 700 Billion. First, highly doubtful. Second, the money won't win a war. They need weapons, ammunition, and troops. The west doesn't have 700 Billion worth of weapons to sell. Who does? Russia, China, and Iran. In short, if the EU were serious about backing Ukraine, they would be ramping up weapons production. But they haven't. 3 years of war, and Europe hasn't considered weapons manufacture to be a priority.