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Notes -
If you want to compare historical wars with the present situation in Ukraine, I would suggest the Mexican-American war as a better template. Mapped over to historical events…
The United States —> Russia Mexico —> Ukraine Texas —> Crimea/DPR/LPR
I’m a bit short on time, but try to read the Wikipedia page and draw the comparisons. To me at least there are many similarities.
The annexation of Texas was largely downstream of first Spain, then newly-independent Mexico encouraging Americans to colonize the mostly-unoccupied-except-Native-Americans region (land grants happened elsewhere in the American West as well). For reasons involving language/culture barriers, a proto-fascist dictatorship, and, yes, slavery, Texas declared and won it's independence from Mexico, puttered along as a recognized independent state for a decade before US annexation, and the actual Mexican American war kicked off over the exact borders of Texas.
I don't see that many parallels here. Did Ukraine encourage Russian settlement in Crimea/Donetsk? I don't think the Spanish Empire fits in the place of the USSR here. And the US was actually pretty reluctant to annex Texas at the time because it would change the antebellum balance of slave and free states. Texas had formal relations with other major powers, and there was some discussion with the British about border guarantees as an alternative to American annexation, although IMO the close ties there probably made that a non-starter.
I see a little bit of what you are suggesting, but I think it plays almost equally well in reverse: with
independence from Spainthe fall of the Iron Curtain, Western ideals were invited into the region, setting up an inevitable conflict with caudilloSanta AnnaPutin in ways that lostMexicothe Russian sphere of influence huge swaths of territory and riches in ways that might have been salvageable. Was Texas independence, or the broader Mexican Cession, truly inevitable? Maybe, but Santa Anna didn't seem particularly interested in keeping them (edit: except by force), and Texas wasn't even the only rebellious Mexican province in 1835.In a way? How far are we willing to go back here?
The whole comparison with Mexico kinda breaks down as soon as you figure in the fact both Russia and Ukraine are broken pieces of the Soviet Union modeled after its internal politics.
If we introduce temporality into this discussion then it actually crippled the Texas=D/LNR and Mexico=Ukraine, and it becomes Texas=Ukraine and Mexico=Russia. The proximate relevance of 2022 Ukraines relationship with Russia is the 2014 Crimea and Novorossiya adventure, not the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union or the slavification of the Pale Of Settlement from god knows when to god knows when. 1991 Ukraine did not exhibit the same hostility to its parent patron as much as the Texans did the Mexicans back in 1991, but it certainly does since 2014. The animating force of hostility against Russia is the disregard for the internal motivations of the Ukrainian polity, and that fuckup is Russias own doing. Sticking with a Belarus model of relationship cultivation is yielding dividends in Hungary and maybe Romania in this year of 2024, and nothing indicates 2014 Ukrainians were especially lured to the liberal pieties of the West. Texas would not have seceded from Mexico without the change in political status quo, and in fact it brought in plenty of Anglos specifically seeking to escape the US diktats. Perhaps if Putin didn't fuck up his Ukraine adventure we would see Carlsonstan set up as an antiliberal tradcon utopia.
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