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I suppose it's been memory-holed and vastly unpopular both here and in the mainstream media, but Ukraine did take many actions in the lead-up to the 2022 invasion and the 2014 invasion and the period inbetween that reflects poorly on them. They're not blameless for all this (although most blame goes to Russia and the US liberal foreign policy establishment for fucking with Ukraine). I'm not going to go into detail about each point but they include:
I have no lost love for Russia but it's been so dishonest how Ukraine over the past few years has been transformed in the media from a corrupt shithole to the bastion of European democracy (despite, you know, Zelenskyy destroying all his political opposition. If it wasn't for American and European interests meddling in Ukraine for the last two decades, this conflict would be indistinguishable from any other regional global conflict (India-Pakistan, Rwanda-Congo etc)
It always seemed to me that the Croatian Operation Storm, which terminated the separatist war in Krajina in 1995, was seen by NATO decision makers after 2014 as the ideal course of action to be repeated in the Donbass. Every decision was subordinated to this, and Putin knew it. It’s not a baseless idea, as the Russian state has been afflicted by internal crises before, and the central government normally becomes weak and wavering as a result. It seemed reasonable to assume that there will be no serious Russian reprisal once the Ukrainians are able to recapture the area in a swift operation abetted by the Americans in such a case. The problem, of course, is that this requires high levels of discipline and patience, and the Russians to be so dumb as not to think of preventive measures while they still can.
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Perhaps it's unpopular because its the "WMD's" of the Russian invasion. Do Ukrainian and US actions/ provocations best explain the Russian invasion compared to belligerent revanchism and (ethno? lingo?) nationalism in the minds of Russian leaders? Or the significant ethnic/language/regional divide within Ukraine itself? Putin has stated his revanchist worldview in stark terms, but his casus belli was denazification? The Russia-supported conflict in Donbas killed around 15k people, the invasion has killed ballpark 1M. Stated another way: has the Russian state really pursued its own survival, or an ideological project? Just like the WMD in Iraq its probably a bit of both, but I can't fault people for thinking its mostly the latter.
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Certainly Russia claims Ukraine violated the agreements, and they shouted about it loudly and at every opportunity, but didn't they attack Donetsk airport with heavy regular forces (including TOS-1 thermobarics), which was why Minsk 1 collapsed, and launched cross border artillery strikes plus regular army commitments throughout both agreements (while naturally denying everything even as the craters smoked)?
It seems harsh to describe Ukraine resuming fighting following these breaches and putting the agreed reforms on hold as critical violations, but not mentioning the Russian actions prior that the Ukrainians used as justification (right or wrong). That would be serious memory holing too right?
I certainly agree removing Russian as an official language was a huge own goal. Plus, the reliance on Azov plus other militias due to the weakness of Ukraine's regulars in 2014/15 was very poor optics.
In any case, the real devastation of the population across the Donbass seems to have happened post 2022, with mass conscription into poorly equipped units (the mosin brigades) and people fleeing en masse from the advancing Russians. The region seems pretty much wrecked now, in the arms of Russia but not seen as proper Russians - at least as per Strelkov (though he certainly liked to doompost - hence his arrest).
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