You can watch a few documentaries, "Revealing Ukraine", "Ukraine On Fire". It is a long running story that has not been reported on in the West. You can find both of them on YouTube I think ... if not they are cheap to rent on Amazon Prime.
Basically Ukraine has been subverted with Western money. The US has funneled money to PR firms to get candidates elected to the Presidency.
Two of the most important were Victor Yushenko, you might remember because he evoked a lot of pity because while running he was somehow poisoned with dioxin and his face puffed all up, but he survived and won the election. But he was a lousy President, so he got voted out. But before he left office he posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor or whatever they call it to a man named Stepan Bandera, white nationalist and a Nazi who was a terrorist. This action demonstrated Yushenko's and the US's ties to the Nazis in Ukraine. No one can govern from either side because if they cross the Nazis they get murdered. Something never reported in the Western media. Meanwhile the country is looted, industries that might compete with the West are shut down.
Ukraine's government also banned the use of German, and began to make life hard for the Russian majority in the Southeast of the country - the Donbass. This area, and the Sea of Azov is Russia's only warm water port - a strategic necessity for them. Check a map.
Then came Victor Yushenko, a Russian supported candidate, a friend of Putin, but they disagree strongly on certain issues, for instance Yushenko believes Ukraine is an independent nation while Putin thinks its ties to Russia are so strong it is really part of Russia. Yushenko did an OK job as President, but all this time the West was moving in with money. The economy started to go bad because the West shuttered almost all of Ukraine's industry, train, auto, aerospace, shipbuilding, etc, and people started to leave Ukraine - a million a years.
Meanwhile the Nationalist Nazis were attacking Russians, which culminated in the Maidan uprising where Nazis shot and killed police, and burned Russian protestors in a building. When the government tried to bring back order, the Nazis basically ran Yushenko out of the country. He grabbed a helicopter, but his car was machine-gunned by Nazis as he was leaving.
Skip to Zelensky, the current hero President of Ukraine. A popular media figure, a rich guy with millions in offshore bank accounts. The problem is that even he cannot get much done because the Right-wing nationalist Nazis who the West has basically hired as thugs threaten to kill him if he does anything they don't like.
Meanwhile the US is making plans to try to wedge Ukraine economically to the EU, and militarily to NATO, which they promised not to do, and Russia say is an existential threat. Ostensibly this is the reason Russia invaded because of the possibility that Ukraine would join NATO. The other side of that is that Germany and France do not want Ukraine in NATO because they do not want to be on the hook to defend Ukraine is Russia invades.
The plan of the US has been an unwanted disaster for Europe. Russia invaded because their demands are:
- Change Ukraine's Constitution to forbid joining NATO.
- Recognize Crimea as Russian.
- Allow the Russian areas in Ukraine autonomy/indepence.
- Ukraine should be neutral/demilitarized.
- Get rid of the Nationalist Nazis. ( see Azov Battalion )
Russia has been steadily broadcasting their stand on these issue for years, and the US/West has been ignoring them and calling their bluff. I think Putin, just my opinion, that Putin invaded Ukraine and said he would use nukes because right or wrong he felt he needed to make a statement and draw a line.
There is a lot more to this than I can fit here, and I do not mean to attack or defend any side of this. Seeing Putin's motives is not to agree with him.
My personal opinion is that the fighting should have stopped ASAP, but the Nazis are the ones who prolong it and provoke it - because they know they are either gone or dead when Putin gets a hold of them. They have gotten millions of dollars of Western arms, and the longer this goes on the more chance that they will escape to greater Europe and terrorize other countries will all those arms. Imagine US government officials or airliners flying into Europe and being downed by Stinger missiles. It is insane.
I think Zelensky doesn't want to miss his chance to a worldwide hero and it is pushing him to make bad decisions. Ukraine cannot win against the Russians, and he seems willing to get Ukrainians killed and blow up the country so he can be bigshot oligarch President. It's a frickin' mess.
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