awooga83 I don't think the war is good but Russia launched an aggressive war said the Ukrainian people aren't a real people and should be under Russian control and wrote extensively about Ukraine not being a legitimate country.
Let's take some of the broad questions:
- Are all Ukrainians a distinct sovereign people from Russians with their right to the self-determination of the whole of the contemporary boundaries of what is called Ukraine?
- What should the relationship of Ukrainian sovereignty and freedom to NATO membership be?
The "United States logic" and "Russian logic" about these questions has changed a lot since Ukrainian independence and nuclear disarmament in the 1990s.
In the 1990s, the first question was seen as a lower priority following independence, and the second question was answered by both empires as "Ukraine must never be invited to NATO". See for example the famous open letter signed by 60 veterans of the United States foreign policy establishment.
By 2014 after Maidan, NATO's eastward expansion had been underway and raising inter-imperial tensions for well over a decade.
For the US at this stage the first question was answered by absolute insistence on Ukrainian distinction and sovereignty, the second by the claim it was Ukraine's right to join NATO.
Russia by now answered the first question with a denial of the integrity of Ukrainian nationhood, and on the second continued its absolute red line against Ukraine joining NATO.
Now it's 2026: the US doesn't really care about either question any more, and Russia holds the positions it does in 2014.
The NATO and the US encouraged Ukraine to call Russia's bluff, so it did. Russia went all in on this war based on its logic, Ukraine's been devastated, and NATO and the US have demonstrated they don't care enough about Ukraine not to aim for a negotiated peace which will carve up Ukraine and prevent Ukraine ever joining NATO.
Russia's "sphere of influence" is as it was but now defined by newly intense internecine hatred. The US has its predatory critical minerals deal, its venal military contractors are happy, and it's winding back its interest in NATO full stop. NATO is re-arming but has no intention of triggering Article 5. The EU and Russia have drastically cut down their economic and diplomatic ties.
It is horrific. However, many people said this was a very likely trajectory over the past decade, since the wrangling over the Russian-funded separatist warfare in the Donbas after 2014, and the failure of the Minsk Accords. Meanwhile all the people who told Ukrainians "No, it won't be that way" have done nothing remotely adequate to make that the truth, but still talk as if they were very committed to their noble points of view.
