I wanted to commend this piece by Norman Davies at The Spectator on the complex history of Poland and Ukraine to your attention. Conflicts among Poland, Ukraine, and Russia have been going on for at least a millennium. Each country has its own view of that history. Reading the article probably won’t clear anything up for you but it may illustrate how complicated the situation is.
I don’t defend the Russian invasion of Ukraine but I also don’t want the Ukrainians to be exterminated or a nuclear war and that’s the direction we’re heading in if this goes on.
My mostly futile efforts have been targeted at explaining the Russian point of view not defending it. Here’s my probably equally futile attempt at proposing a compromise resolution to the conflict. Ukraine should renounce any claim to Crimea and allow Donetsk and Luhansk provinces their independence , something to which it committed some time ago. NATO should guarantee both this new Ukraine’s independence and the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Nobody will like that resolution but IMO it has an outside chance of ending the carnage.
The history reads pretty accurately to me. It shows, again, that the Russian claim to the area just isn’t that strong. The claims about Nazis are BS as it was mostly the ethnic Russians who collaborated. The Ukrainians were a separate entity well before they got independence from Russia. That the Russians killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930-1940s and deported probably another million, especially children.
You have been trying to convey the Russian POV but there just isn’t much that is substantial behind their claims. It’s a power grab. They want to re-establish the empire they had for a short while, from a historical perspective, and they make up excuses that you repeat fro them. If a Democratic politician says something you report that with quite a bit fo skepticism, which is fair, but it doesnt seem like you do much of that for Russian claims.
From your POV it makes sense to just give Russia the land they invaded and claimed. However, Russia has killed million of Ukrainians in the not to far past. In this invasion they sent in Wagner as lead group, a bunch of criminals who have behaved largely as you would expect. Millions killed, an invasion without cause with a bunch of criminals leading the effort with torture and abuse common and it is far from me to tell the Ukrainians what to do.
Steve