> As to this particular war - the US agreed at the end of the cold war not to expand NATO east and yet it did, breaking the agreement.
This is a persistent myth, there was never an agreement to not expand NATO with the USSR, and the one person who would know at the time Mikhail Gorbachev has said as much.
> At multiple points during this war, the Russians have offered to negotiate. Instead, the US has responded with "to the last Ukrainian".
The Ukrainians where negotiating regarding the war then the Russians where pushed out of a number of cities that they held and we saw the horrific scene they left behind.
That is likely the point that the Ukrainian's decided that there would be no negotiating.
> Today, Russia is essentially also arguing for pre-emptive war but the reasoning - putting American missiles and forces in Ukraine - is a hell of a lot plausible.
Yet theres no war against Finland is there, and there will be US soldiers in Finland far before they are ever in Ukraine.
> The fact that there has been not one effort to negotiate by the Americans shows that the West isn't interested in peace or the interests of Ukrainians - they simply want a country naive and suicidal enough to throw themselves against the Russian subhumans.
There has been an effort to negotiate by the Americans, which ironically angered a large number of people as it happened behind the backs of Ukraine by using back channels.
The sheer amount of whataboutism, lies, and deflections you just wrote is staggering, truly.
First, no-one promised to expand NATO to russia; Gorbachov himself rebuked this.
Second, have you ever considered that countries want to join a defensive(sic!) bloc not to appease "the West", but to safeguard against what happened in Georgia and what is happening in Ukraine right now?
If russia sees the expansion of NATO as a problem, then why did both putin and his establishment repeatedly deny recent inclusion of Finland/Sweden as being an issue? Why did russia completely empty its Finland border and send equipment and soldiers from those bases to Ukraine?
Third, russians never attempted to "negotiate" in good faith; all their inane "demands" - denazification (aka killing all Ukrainians who disagree with them), demilitarisation, etc etc - remained the same.
Fourth, "at the present the Ukrainians have lost" is simply incredible. Let's see how this year played out: "special military operation to take Kyiv in 3 days" is now reaching its second year; Ukraine regained more territories this year than russia ("world's 2nd army") gained in the same year; russia having to beg North Korea for artillery shells; rouble in free-fall; finally, a warlord's private military company nearly completing his march to Moscow in actual 3 days.
Fifth, the conditions of any peace negotiations remain the same: russia gets out of Ukraine. This has been Ukraine's position from day 1.
Finally, I can assure you the majority of Ukrainian population despises russia after what you've done. There is no "Perfidious West" forcing anyone to fight.
P.S. Quit LARPing. Your first comment on HN is literally about Poland wanting to partition Ukraine - another insane conspiracy theory spread around by IRA et. al. Every accusation is admission with you lot, every single time.
>Today, Russia is essentially also arguing for pre-emptive war but the reasoning - putting American missiles and forces in Ukraine - is a hell of a lot plausible.
The Russian government invaded Ukraine because they consider it a fake nation that was illegitimately carved out of Russia. The "neo-Nazi NATO" excuses were just lies they made up for naive Westerners.
At this point it’s a chicken an egg problem - do russians really believe what you said, or are their beliefs a product of decades of internal propaganda?
I mean, yeah, probably many of them believe it now.
Personally, I lean towards this - after 20 years in power Putin is a defacto dictator perched on top of a government machine he constructed to keep him there. A machine composed of various pieces of corruption, propaganda, repressions, and bribes.
And like many dictatorships before - having to pressure relief valve of changing people in power, he has to deflect discontent elsewhere, external enemies, NATO, etc, and ply his population with achievements they can soothe themselves with while submerged in poverty and corruption. And justifications are made up as needed by the machine of the state.
You are repeating russian propaganda and there are people far smarter than I that have repeatedly tried to explain why it is such and failed, and I won’t bother trying.
