Quote (SanduLungu @ Feb 25 2022 03:11am)
> everything starts with Crimeea during Obama's "power"
> continues with donbas takeover during Obama's "power"
> russia did nothing during Trump's reign, literally NOTHING
> immediately when biden comes to "power", Russia start pressing Ukraine
> leftists blame trump
but consider the scenario I was exploring
Obama's administration chose to back Euromaidan and micromanage the Ukrainian government. There's a question of how much this was Obama, Biden, Kerry, the CIA, whoever, but they did at any rate.
But then Obama consciously chose
not to escalate in Ukraine, refusing to send lethal arms because Russia would see that as an unacceptable military threat to their borders. Obama made a point of both quashing talk of NATO expansion and western military aid, courting an uneasy standoff between Ukraine and the separatist regions held by Russian forces. When Trump faced off against Putin, motivated in part by a need to overcompensate for domestic political pressure accusing him of being in bed with Putin and in part by geopolitical theory of projecting strength, Trump decided to send lethal arms to Ukraine. In effect he crossed Putin's red line and set in motion the events that Obama had tried to avoid. And Putin being characteristically glacially paced in his cold revenge (note the time span between his 2011 election and 2016 revenge on Clinton), he waited until both Nord Stream II was ripe and Biden was a pushover and Russia's other military fronts eased up before storming Ukraine.
There can be an argument for responsibility shared by Obama, Trump and Biden alike, but I'd say Trump bears the most responsibility in this scenario. But for exactly the opposite reason the leftists claim. Like, the provocation was Trump being
too hostile to Russia and too friendly with ukraine, and these guys tried to impeach him for holding onto those stingers for a hypothetical