No they didn't. They were already there. The biggest feature of Crimea is the naval base that Russia had been leasing since Ukraine had a legitimately elected government. When the US supported Nazi led coup regime took power they tried to cancel the lease. The Russians simply stayed put. They didn't invade. They were already there.

Are there any more fundamental understandings of recent history you would like me to catch you up on?

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You realise that Crimea is larger than Sevastopol and Donetsk and Luhansk are not on Crimea?

Also, that "US supported Nazi coup" is 100% Russian propaganda not backed by anything but fantasy?

[–] ThereRisesARedStar@hexbear.net 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nuland/pyatt call at minimum shows that they took advantage of already existing protests to do a soft coup.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nah it shows that the US had opinions on Ukraine. US emissaries also tried to convince protestors to enter negotiations and compromise with Yanukovich and they were having none of that.

US emissaries and the Rada coming to the same conclusion when it comes to who is a good interim whatever isn't terribly surprising, you always pick prominent, well-respected, honourable, non-partisan middle of the road people for that kind of thing. People who can be trusted to organise proper elections and not fuck shit up in the meantime.

[–] ThereRisesARedStar@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you always pick prominent, well-respected, honourable, non-partisan middle of the road people for that kind of thing. People who can be trusted to organise proper elections and not fuck shit up in the meantime.

Is this a joke? The US sidelined the main opposition forces who wanted to stay on good terms with both Russia and the US in favor of literal nazis. The new president was the leader of the "fatherland party" until he splintered it off into an even more conservative group which had a military council of nazi paramilitary leaders and was basically generically called "national socialist party"

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Turchynov? You can say a lot of things about him especially that he's conservative, but not that he wouldn't be a democrat. But who was interim wasn't important in the first place as then there were elections.

Those were won by Poroshenko who was rather heavy-handed in the east, also socially conservative, which made people (for one or both of those reasons) vote for Zelensky -- an ethnic Russian, running on a "let's try to be friends" platform, but not one of those "let's just bend over for Russia and let the Kremlin rule the country" people, either.

Those are all descisions of the Ukrainian electorate. To imply that that was all the US reeks of conspiratorial American exceptionalism. Believe it or not things happen without the CIA having their dirty fingers in it.

[–] ThereRisesARedStar@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

Sorry. The prime Minister was the nazi, I forget that ukraine has both.

But generally yes the people that nuland and pyatt installed ruined contrary to ukrainian interests. Neutrality was how they avoided war. Things leaned too far to Russia, that caused a coup that led to an anti-russia government which led to the war.