Think of a teenager, or a young adult who has no interest in politics. All they've ever heard is that Russia and Putin are evil. If you had an opportunity to explain to them why the war is happening - what would you say?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (41)
sorted by:
Ukraine had a democratically elected government that got along with Russia. Ukraine was perfectly happy.
The USA decided that it wanted to have a pro-western government in Ukraine, instead so it organised a coup so they could change the government. First, protests, then riots then they hired snipers to kill both protestors and police to get the violence started.
The result was that the old government was replaced with one chosen by Victoria Nuland and her associates while the previous president fled to Russia.
Many ethnic Urainians are basically Nazis. One of their national heroes is Stepan Bandera and they dislike the ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine, mainly in the east of Ukraine. So they started shelling them. That went on for eight years and, some say, Ukraine was organising a final push to get rid of the remaining Russians in Ukraine. They had already killed 14,000 in the 8-year period after 2014.
That was the point in 2022 when Russia said: No more.
There were two sets of peace agreements following talks in Minsk, Belarus and, in spite of the fact that Ukraine was backed by France and Germany, Ukraine reneged on those agreements. Angela Merkel has since said that they were really only to play for time to let Ukraine get ready to fight Russia. There was nearly a third agreement but Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, flew to see Zelensky and talk him out of it.