Oh will you? Will you response be like the others — ignoring most of what I said — or will you address each point I made?

Do I think the Russian army should withdraw from Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, includint Crimea? I will answer it in depth.

1) First, the most one-dimensional and simplistic answer. With regard to everything except Crimea: yes of course, and the internationally recognized Minsk II agreements should have been implemented. Do you think that Ukraine should have allowed fresh water to flow to Crimea, and stopped bombing the people of Luhansk and Donetsk, give the degree of autonomy to the people of Donetsk and Luhansk that they are demanding, allow them to teach Russian, etc.?

2) If everyone kept their word, Russia would have never entered because Ukraine would have either put down the rebellion, and things would have gotten back to normal — or implemented the Minsk II agreements, and things would have gotten back to normal. According to your own article it declined to absorb Luhansk and Donetsk and pushed them to work things out with Kyiv and remain inside Ukraine. That shocked Strelkov and he committed himself to supporting the rebels and fighting the far-right nationalist battallions.

3) In a perfect world, Russia would have never entered, because USA would have never fomented a revolution, sponsored far-right extremist groups, installed a puppet regime in Ukraine, and destabilized the country with revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries forming opposing brigades. But I won’t ask you the corresponding questions about whether you think USA should stay out of other countries’ business 3000 miles away, dozens of countries around the world, because you asked me not to. After all, that would be “whataboutism” and we are only after fantasy scenarios here, where one side (Russia) does all the accomodating to keep peace while the other side (USA) keeps expanding unchecked forever.

4) Regarding Crimea, I am aware that in 1954 it was gifted from Russian SSR to Ukrainian SSR without asking the people. In 1991 the people on the ground voted overwhelmingly (close to 100%) to break free of Ukraine and be independent. They were ignored. Then 54% voted to be part of Ukraine, but multiple times since then Crimea demanded autonomy and Kyiv signed concession agreements, which it broke repeatedly to assert its domininion over Crimea, force changes to its constitution etc. So it is unsurprising that they voted to be independent again in the 2014 referendum and I believe that, had OSCE or any others overseen it, the result would have been the same. Do I think the will of the people on the ground should be respected? Yes, and countries including Ukraine should grant such populations a degree of autonomy, to the point where membership in this or that country is a minor detail (as it was in 1954 when Crimea changed hands).

5) In the current world, I think the only vehicle by which nationalistic fervor can be tempered is being part of the same federation (eg the Republic of California is part of the USA) and breaking those ties can lead to more instability and violence. In an ideal world, countries would be unbundled into multiple services (police, roads etc) with agencies competing for the business of a city, neighborhood etc. peacefully competing on how well they serve the people. Rather than treating people as livestock to own that graze on your land, which is how you currently think of Crimeans or Luhansk people etc. You think of countries as the primary actors, and anthropomorphosize them, while people are m mostly fodder, or stand-ins for monolithic “political aspirations”. This is exactly what I encounter when I speak to other statists, including people who want to build a Palestinian state, or people who believe China owns this or that territory forever. I think the current system of “country borders and ownership” is an unfortunate tinderbox because demographics change and there should be better, more libertarian systems. We can see the tinderbox firsthand eg in Yugoslavia or in nearly all the countries set up by the Sykes-Picot agreement.

Now answer my previous comment point by point as you promised to do.