Quote:
Originally Posted by Coys1882
It's so infuriating that we aren't doing more.
Honest question here. Why didn't the EU, Canada, USA, Japan and Australia have troops in Ukraine a month ago - chilling on the border with the home troops? Why isn't that deterrent an option?
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Cuz EU has no defense agreements with Ukraine and they are not a member of NATO. Traditionally Ukraine has been a Russian ally and previous Ukrainian administrations were complicit the Gazprom natural gas kickback and bribery schemes in which Russian LNG was sold to EU countries like Germany through pipelines that ran through Ukraine while Putin and Oligarchs were skimming profits off the top and using the proceeds to buy European and Ukrainian government officials + make themselves filthy rich. When the Orange revolution in 2013 deposed of Russia's puppet government, the Ukrainians demanded broader integration with the EU, but not NATO membership yet.
Putin losing his puppet government in Ukraine freaked him out because at that point he was looking to retire, but the the Orange revolution showed him even he could be deposed if people rose up. Combination of potentially being prosecuted himself, losing Ukraine and Russia's only warm water naval port, and possibly being surrounded by NATO/EU nations that were not friendly to Russian interests sent him off the deep end and he invaded Crimea knowing NATO membership rules state that a country needs to be at peace and have resolved any outstanding border conflicts before being allowed join NATO. Ukraine having an active conflict with Russia prevent them from joining up and Russia wouldn't be surrounded.
EU not responding harshly against Russia the first time showed Putin he could get away with what he had just seized, and the EU countries went back to their Russian gas addiction and complacency convinced Putin was only interested in that one piece of land around their port. They never thought Putin would be crazy enough to actually roll to full scale war like he has and after Trump the US had major credibility problems trying to convince the EU. EU's addiction to Russian LNG has prevented them from doing anything militarily. Their mentality was always Ukraine was always "its within Russias sphere of influence anyways" and not really their problem. Combination of US being war weary (no more boots on the ground), NATO allies getting burned by Afghanistan/Iraq wars, EU being happily addicted to Russian low cost natural gas, and no one wanting to fight an nuclear armed Russian unless they absolutely have to, has prevented a troop build up ahead of time despite knowing far in advance an invasion was coming. Lot of these factors are still preventing a proper sanction response against Russia.