Comment by pclmulqdq
14 days ago
If you note that what Russia wants is Ukrainian territory (first Crimea in 2014 and then a land connection to Crimea in 2022), that was guaranteed to involve some amount of war. That will give you everything you need to infer the correct direction of causation.
Why do you think Russia wants territory? Why did they suddenly develop an appetite for territory in 2014?
> Why did they suddenly develop an appetite for territory in 2014?
Did they? They took a chunk of Georgia in 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War) and have been actively occupying some of Moldova since 1990 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria_conflict).
They have wanted it since the fall of the Soviet Union and access to the Black Sea has immense strategic value to them. They only had geopolitical (and local political) cover to get it in 2014 and 2022.
So not because ukraine rejected them in 2013? To be explicit, I still have seen no evidence for the premise that '_some_ amount of war' was inevitable. Belarus would seem to be an obvious counterexample.
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