> aggressor

You mean NATO with its orders of magnitude power encroaching East despite their empty promises in 90s?

How is this related to one sovereign nation invading another sovereign nation?

Survival. What would you do when someone much stronger than you corners you? You hit back.

Ukraine is much stronger than Russia and corners it? Are you nuts?

Look at the context of the thread. It is likely that even chatgpt would pick up on the explicitly mentioned NATO, and its power.

Even ChatGPT would pick up my sarcasm and understand that you’re talking out of your ass. Ukraine has as much to do with NATO as Georgia and Afghanistan.

Ukraine applied to integrate with a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. On 20 September 2018 the Ukrainian parliament approved amendments to the constitution that would make the accession of the country to NATO and the EU a central goal and the main foreign policy objective. In other words, Ukraine has a lot to do with NATO. Also, NATO Membership Action Plan involved Georgia.

> On 20 September 2018 the Ukrainian parliament approved amendments to the constitution that would make the accession of the country to NATO and the EU a central goal and the main foreign policy objective.

That definitely came out of nowhere and not because Russian soldiers occupied Crimea and effectively occupied east of Ukraine. Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons and Russia was one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

And regardless of all of this, Ukraine is a sovereign nation and can do whatever the f””” it wants.

Cuba is a sovereign nation, it can install missiles. Oh, wait..

Good example, US didn’t invade under DIRECT threat of nuclear missiles on Cuba’s soil.

Ukraine signed Budapest memorandum in 1994 and willingly gave up nukes for security assurances (ironically Russia is one of the guarantees).

There was no invasion because Soviets removed Cuban missiles and Kennedy promised to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey (the missiles being there is the reason for the crisis in the first place).

QED.

This time It is unlikely that NATO stops the bully-favorite "did you step on my foot" game.

So there is no choice for Russia: fight or be dismembered.