The Rand paper describes why the US military funded report believes Russia invaded Ukraine, and it's as a result to the provocations we implemented. It's fair to disagree with it, but it didn't come from Russia, it came from a US military think tank.
No, by your own words the paper describes how a US-military-funded report believed the US could provoke Russia into invading Ukraine. You still have to show that the US did in fact take those steps, and take them with the intent of causing Russia to invade.
Also note that the paper is from 2019. Russia's invasion of Crimea and Donbass was 2014. So Russia was perfectly capable of getting there without the US having to figure out how to "provoke" them.
I invited you in the OP to do your own research if you aren't aware of all the sanctions we added, the multiple treaties we withdrew from, or how much deadly weapons we provided Ukraine as just a starting point.
I'm not going to bother with semantics arguments around whether the US intended for Russia to go further into Ukraine vs intentionally kept escalating the behaviors that they knew would increase the risk of Russia going further into Ukraine but they didn't "want" it to happen.
In 2014, you mean when the US openly supported revolution in Ukraine and cherry picked the new administration?
Ukraine had previously had a long-standing agreement with Russia to guarantee access to the only warm water port Russia had. After the new regime that was picked by the US came in, they revoked that relationship. That is the reason why Russia took Crimea (warm water port), because it was unwilling to be nerfed by the US in this way.
Ukraine had previously had a long-standing agreement with Russia to guarantee access to the only warm water port Russia had. After the new regime that was picked by the US came in, they revoked that relationship. That is the reason why Russia took Crimea (warm water port), because it was unwilling to be nerfed by the US in this way.
If you couldnt make it anymore obvious that you're pro-putin... you bring up the Kharkiv pact and then re-order historical events to blame putin's actions on the US.
The pact that was terminated BY RUSSIA, AFTER they took Crimea.
> In 2014, you mean when the US openly supported revolution in Ukraine and cherry picked the new administration?
The idea that the US cherry picked the new administration is bonkers. The only "evidence" of this is a phone call where some diplomats talk about how effective they think the opposition are. If there a phone call where US officials say that they think Macron is better than Le Pen is that evidence that the US chose Macron to be the leader of France?
It's an especially silly accusation when you realize that the temporary government just ruled for 6 months until they held an election and made no major changes during that time.
In my opinion the war is a success if Putin can get his hands on luhansk and donetsk. That's the only way this can end well for Russia. They take some more coal and oil territory, make a few billions of dollars more money and then go back to being a dormant threat and gas station for Europe. Who cares if you are ruining your country if you end up richer in the end?
If Putin actually wanted to get his hands on Ukraine to turn it into a puppet state or kick start a neo soviet union then he completely failed.
The Rand paper describes why the US military funded report believes Russia invaded Ukraine, and it's as a result to the provocations we implemented. It's fair to disagree with it, but it didn't come from Russia, it came from a US military think tank.