OK it has taken me this long to disgest this latest video. Without further ado:

The origins and causes of Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

For the last half century the west has ever been in an official or unofficial war against "the enemy" - Russia. The US sought to peel away the orbiting countries around Russia, and incorperate them into the Western union of nations. This was done via (a) Nato Expansion (b) EU Expansion and (c) Regime change "democracy". While Russia had voiced opposition to this in the mid 90's, it was largely ignored, with Nato expanding in 1999 and 2004 respectively. As Russia did not consider the countries in question as being part of its core strategic area, Russia rolled over at the time of each expansion of Nato/EU.

However, in 2008, when Nato welcomed Ukraine and Goergia's aspirations to join Nato, Russia's response was "Georgia and Ukraine becoming part of Nato is a direct threat to Russia". This was a blunt departure from the previous attitude relating to expansions of Nato and should have left no doubt in the West's minds, that this was in fact, a Russian Red Line. My understanding is that this warning was ignored and thus in response Russia invaded Georgia at this time. I would argue now that the US knew this was a red line for Russia but were happy for Russia to go broke invading countries within its core strategic area.

In 2014 Yanukovych (Russian puppet) said no to the EU Deal (incorperating Ukraine into the West). This led to protests and ultimately Yanukovych fled to Russia. A pro-western government replaced him. Following these events Russia subsumed Crimea into itself. From this point onwards, the U.S. accelerated its plans to isolate Russia and started sending massive quantities of weapons to Ukraine. In 2015 the Russia position was "back off, lets leave the status quo". This was ignored, remember the idea is for Russia to go broke. It is worth mentioning that in the Americas continent the US has what is known as the "Monroe Doctrine" which states that it "opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Any intervention in the political affairs of countries in the American Hemisphere by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the U.S." I mention this because I keep seeing references made to Ukraine "they are an independant, sovereign nation, no one can tell them what to do", and yet America has a stated policy of telling those countries around them what is, and is not, accepted, and we know from Cuba that the US is deadly serious about its own core strategic area.

By no later then 2019 (policy appears to have clearly been formed sometime around 2014-2015) Ukraine is now on record as saying: "with a 99% probability, our cost for entering Nato is a big war with Russia at some point between 2021-2022. i.e. They knew their policies were inviting war with Russia but they continued with them anyway. They were very accurate as to when Russia would invade, and they knew the invasion was about to occur but actively misled their people, as they had been since 2014. In summary : There is ample evidence freely available to prove that Ukraine for the last 7 years has been quickly and openly amasssing weapons and training troops to fight this war and that they viewed this war as inevitable, as did the US. The war was telegraphed and was directly caused by Russia's refusal to back down from its red line and the Wests refusal to acknowledge the red line. If the situations were reversed (say Mexico; Canada) the US would have acted in the same fashion, as is proven by what they did to Cuba.

Sources

1. The Monroe Doctrine re: America Sphere of Influence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
2. Cuban Missile Crisis - a direct example of the Monroe Doctrine : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
3. Nato Enlargement down through the years : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO
4. The Minsk Agreement : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
5. Our favourite video in the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
6. Wiki to Yanukovych https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych
7. Wiki to Zelenskyy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy
8. Zelensky's aide Oleksiy_Arestovych 2019-2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksiy_Arestovych
9. Oleksiy interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50sZBFXudhs

Based on everything I have read this is the overall view that I have adopted.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 24 2022 11:25am

You ommited that Oleksiy Arestovych said:

"If we don't join Nato, it's gonna be absorption by Russia within 10-12 years"

Arestovych believed that Russia would have the goal of degrading Ukrainian infrastructure and turning the country into a "devastated territory" in order to make the territory of Ukraine "uninteresting" to Nato. Russia would seek to destroy as much of Ukraine as it could prior to it being accepted into Nato, due to Russia not wanting to confront Nato directly, Arestovych said. Ukraine becomes "uninteresting to Nato as a devastated territory," he said.

They never had the choice, fight for freedom or being a slave.

you already said that, and to reiterate, this is what was said in the interview (last link above) and it (to my understanding) pre-supposed that Ukraine would not back down from seeking nato membership, ergo, thats exactly what russia is doing. I am not disagreeing with you I am merely outlining the events.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 24 2022 11:44am

Hi, I live in eastern Europe so I can tell you whats going on.

Russia was indeed the enemy for a long time for many.
History is: as a result of WW2, many eastern European countries have fallen under russian occupation. Usually it was a little better for them than nazi occupation they had before, but still an occupation they didnt want.
Russia has promised these countries freedom after the war, but of course nothing like that happened. Western allies simply let Russia do anything they want in eastern Europe.
Fortunately 45 years later (~1990) the evil empire bankrupted, and Russia leader decided to try another path, more liberal, they let some countries break free and regain independence.
Everything was doing good for several years, cold war was over, countries in question joined NATO, and everybody hoped that Russians will adapt liberalism oneday.
But then Russian leadership changed again and now tries to rebuild empire by conquering adjacent countries.
They do it by a mix of military and non-military means. Belarus is a non-military "soft" conquest example, while Ukraine is a military conquest example.

This post was edited by Ironfister on Apr 24 2022 01:19pm

i dont disagree with this.

well i would qualify, But then Russian leadership changed again and now tries to maintain sphere of influence by conquering adjacent countries.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 24 2022 02:33pm

So you're upset that Russia retained their sovereignty and rejected liberalism after what it did to their country during the Yeltsin years, when their country was ran by a drunk who was widely regarded as a puppet for Bill Clinton and who sold out the nation's economy to a handful of oligarchs, creating economic devastation and reduced life expectancies for millions of Russians.

So fucking ridiculous.

Your view of reality is like out of a CNN handbook or something. God damn Europe is hopeless...

This same as covid and any other major conflict. It's all debt inslavement

Some recent updates

-Russia continues to fire hundreds of artillery rounds all across the Donbas front on a daily basis
-Dozens of daily air strikes and cruise missiles hitting targets across Ukrainian cities
-Russia continue to push south of Izyum taking various small towns slowly but surely
-Ukrainian intelligence reporting Russia building up sizable force to possibly take Krivyi Rih in the south
-Video footage shows a oil depot has been struck in the western Russian city of Bryansk

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 24 2022 06:46pm

Ukraine has no chance. What will the new narrative be once Russia takes the full Donbass? The defeated Russian military resorts to warcrimes to achieve victory, the heroic Ukrainians only lost because of the brutality of Putin?