Unlike you, I actually lived in Russia and I can tell with 100% certainty that it's a bs narrative that was used to build up Putin support based on confrontation with the "west".
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
I mean, I'm not supporting Russia's actions here, I'm saying the US (mainly) are just a bad an actor. They're essentially fighting a war with Russia (as their warmongers and military complex love to tell their shareholders about), Ukraine is just the pawn in the middle.
I should have said 'towards' the border, not 'on.' My bad.
It would be nice if history was so black and white, wouldn't it?
Ukraine was full of conflict between pro Russia and pro-EU well before that war. It was a complicated political environment.
The invasion was not, and never is, justified, but let's not pretend Putin woke up one day, threw a dart at the dartboard and decided to invade that place.
This provoked Russia to invade how?.
> It would be nice if history was so black and white, wouldn't it?
Good thing that history is that black and white this time, this is as black and white as WW2.
> The invasion was not, and never is, justified, but let's not pretend Putin woke up one day, threw a dart at the dartboard and decided to invade that place.
Then what happened?.
I bet if I asked you why WW1 started you’d say it’s because a Serb assassinated an Austrian.
Not according to direct participants like the foreign minister of the USSR. https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e...
Moreover, NATO and Russia signed a treaty greenlighting NATO enlargement before any official talks with former Warsaw Pact countries started, so whatever was allegedly said or heard prior to that is irrelevant anyway.
>> I'm not supporting Russia's actions here
You are, whether you recognize it or not. Your contrarian take is a made up narrative to justify the war. Makes you feel smarter than the rest while advancing Russian interests and blaming victims for crimes against them.
No I'm not supporting Russia here, I'm saying they were not just acting "out of nowhere," they are playing the same geopolitical war games (and now actual war), as the US is, but the US are pretending they're absolutely the good guys (i.e. pretending they want peace) while shovelling coal into the fire top speed.
It's a war between Russia and NATO/US, Ukraine just happens to hold shared interests and is now sadly in the middle of this disaster of big boys beating chests.
Hence my comment, who's the good guy...
Nope.
Gorbachov himself said that no such agreements were ever made.
> https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
Impressions are not agreements, here's the reality of the matter from the president of the Soviet Union at the time himself.
> https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-...
>> “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”