NATO member countries didn’t really want Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens really didn’t want NATO, but in 2008 Bush vowed to press for both Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/bush-to-press-for-ukra...

Saakashvili of Georgia (who is now in jail for corruption) also had two breakaway republics at the time — Ossetia and Abhazia — and he engaged in a war with them and kept hoping NATO would come. Back then Putin wasn’t even president, it was Medvedev. Anyway, the same exact war started happening back then, with Russia invading Georgia with tanks moving slowly to the capitol, Tbilisi. Their goal was to intimidate them into agreeing to stop shelling the two breakaway republics and leave them alone. (Georgia and Armenia, in turn, had been protected by Russia from Ottomans, much the same way).

The difference in that war was that it ended in a week, because Nicolas Sarkozy (the French president) negotiated a peace agreement successfully. Since then Russia hasn’t invaded Georgia further, simply protected Abhazia and Ossetia, in fact Georgia has been normalizing relations with Russia and opened up direct flights and tourism last year etc. A great outcome for all civilians, compared to what could have been a senseless war. I was in Georgia last year and saw it firsthand.

Meanwhile, after the regime change revolution in Ukraine in 2014, the CIA had 8 years to build up weapons and paramilitaries etc. Same exact playbooj that ravaged Afghanistan w the mujahideen (Arabic for “jihadists”) and Afghan Arabs, masterminded by Zbignew Brezhinski. This time it was CIA in Ukraine: https://news.yahoo.com/cia-trained-ukrainian-paramilitaries-...

So in 2022 when Russians tried the same playbook (intimidate Kyiv into not shelling the two breakway republics) they didn’t expect the Ukrainians to walk away from the negotiating table. They waited for them in Belarus under Lukashenko (where they had signed the Minsk accords years earlier, endorsed unanimously by the UN security council) but the Ukrainian negotiators kept delaying and venue shopping, and the SBU (Ukrainian KGB) even killed one of them as “a traitor” for being too eager to negotiate, a man appointed by the President himsdlf and who the Ukrainian state department called “a hero”.

I personally spoke to David Arakhamia (the guy w the hat) on Facebook Messenger in the first days of the war, he had many Ukrainians on his FB wall begging him to make a deal and avert the war. I tool screenshots and the pleading posts are still there. He privately told me he agreed w me. But when the negotiators entered the room they left after 2 hours. We don’t kmow what happens in closed rooms — whether Baker promised “not an inch” to Gorbachev, or whether the Ukrainian or Russian negotiators ever negotiated in good faith. But the civilians, the people deserve better representation. The war continued, and the tanks found themselves around Kyiv and major firefights in Bucha vs Azov and other armed groups with RPGs shooting at tanks. Kind of like the red triangle videos of Hamas vs Israeli tanks. It’s really unfortunate and was avoidable. Russia expected it to go like the last war, it didn’t.

Naftali Bennett was the Israeli PM and he could have played the role of Nicolas Sarkozy did with Medvedev (Russia) and Saakashvili (Georgia). He has a tell-all interview in Hebrew about how he had negotiated peace DIRECTLY between Putin and Zelensky, and had them both make major concessions — eg Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO, and Putin promised not to kill Zelensky. In his interview he said that Zelensky double-checked this and then came out to record his famous video “I am not afraid, I am here” and saying he needs ammunition, not a ride.

Why did Bennett not succeed? He said he “coordinated everything to the smallest detail” with the US and UK, he “doesn’t do as he pleases”, and they told him he MUST stop the peace deal. He said he “thought they were wrong” and still does. That peace is worth a shot. But he didn’t continue, and the war didnt stop 2 weeks into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yma0LxyVVs

Erdogan luckilh WAS able to negotiate a year-long grain export deal in the midst of a war, which likely saved millions of lives — Yemen had been very dependent on Ukrainian grain and had a famine from yet ANOTHER proxy war (this one between Iran and Saudis w US weapons, same kind of war but with roles reversed). But no one seemed to care about Yemenis, despite millions being in far more dire hunger conditions than Ukrainians ever were.

The world is complex, but Bush had started the stupid push into NATO, even as NATO members were slowwalking him. My guess is he was angry at Putin’s Munich speech in 2007 NATO, calling out USA for invading Iraq and violating international law. Back in 2001 Putin was the first president after 9/11 to call Bush and offer condolences and they made a joint anti-terrorism initiative. Putin wanted to join NATO back in 2001, he asked the NATO heads but was always rejected. Since 2002(!) Russia tried to stop the invasion of Iraq in the security council and every other way it could but Bush couldn’t be stopped. That is when I think Russia realized that after Kosovo and Iraq, that NATO isnt purely defensive and USA isnt going to be constrained by international law. Putin’s speech in 2007 made Bush want to flip Russia’s neighbors (about which every ambassador said it was a red line for anyone in Russia, “not just Putin”) so the result was predetermined:

https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-w...

As for why Bush did it — I will let Bush say it in his own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTX5uvZWu3Q