That was decades before Crimea.
As is Poland, bordering the Kaliningrad Oblast. It’s that odd little separated piece of Russia on the Baltic Sea, which was created to give Russia a port on the Baltic that remains ice-free in winter, unlike St. Petersburg.
Hey, that gives me an idea…
That’s true and I agree isn’t relevant to what’s happening today. However, in hindsight, the West could have done a lot more to help Ukraine rid itself of Russian-backed separatists.
Uh, like ethnic cleansing?
I didn’t suggest they get rid of all ethnic Russians. Just the ones trying to break away from Ukraine and form their own country that would be closely aligned with Russia.
It’ll be interesting to see if this tips Sweden and Finland over the edge to joining NATO.
The argument of “not enraging the Russians” appears to be null and void, now.
Could you ask him where he thinks Kaliningrad should belong based on history?
The entire country was aligned with Russia until the last decade, thus the relatively recent rise of viable separatist movements.
Is that in writing? Climate change… Gulf of Finland ice-free year after year… do widzenia, we’ll do without ya.
Pretty much how the US expanded across North America. Of course, that was a while back.
Indeed, Crimea was lumped into the Ukraine SSR for mostly administrative reasons AIUI. Not sure about those eastern regions; my podcast on the Russian Revolution isn’t quite up to that point!
To the OP: as I type Russia is officially invading Ukraine proper “for defensive reasons”. Declared war aim is to demilitarise it - and denazify it!
So, we have the answer to OP’s original title question: “So Russia has invaded Ukraine - or not?”
Has.
ETA: New thread for this in MPSIMS, as it’s now a “current event”:
I agree completely.
Though probably not for the same reason.
Well Putin is going straight for Keiv. Biden’s intelligence briefings were correct.
Imho NATO better take this very seriously. I don’t believe this will be limited to only Ukraine.
We (the West) may not be able to avoid an actual war. From what I’ve read and heard the last couple of days, sanctions will have no effect.
This is sickening.
Without any provocation, a sovereign nation has invaded another sovereign nation in Europe. This is a big deal.
I’m a bit surprised that this thread (or a different one) isn’t moving a mile a minute. I thought the comments would be hundreds an hour.
Maybe there’s another thread I don’t know about?
There are 2 or 3 other threads. In fact, I’m going to close this one and point to the other 2 major ones.
In GD, invasion starts around here:
In MPSIMS: