Last I checked, Ukraine hadn't invaded its neighbors, gassed ethnic minorities, or taken freedom from its entire female population.
The US handled Afghanistan and Iraq poorly, and lied about reasons for going in, but there were actual underlying reasons.
Ukraine is only being invaded because Russia thinks it can.
Hell, Ukraine explicitly gave up its weapons of mass destruction... in exchange for security guarantees... from Russia.
IMHO, once military forces reach rough parity, civil wars should never be a justification for external involvement, because it always ends badly.
Internal problems need internal solutions.
If Russia and NATO had both stayed out of Ukraine, it would have been better for all Ukrainians. But we zoomed past the Rubicon on that when Crimea was invaded with actual Russian troops.
Nice try. How do these compare at all to the Ukraine Donbas conflict? During the span of 2014-2022, the war in Ukraine (pre Russian invasion) between Ukraine and Donbas region resulted in the following:
Ukraine troops 4,647 killed, 70 missing, 13,800–14,200 wounded
Donbas troops 6,517 killed, 15,800–16,200 wounded
3,404 Ukrainian civilians killed 14,200–14,400 Donbas killed 51,000–54,000 wounded overall
1.6 million Ukrainians internally displaced; over 1 million fled abroad
No you didn’t, since the allegation is directed at the post-Maidan Ukrainian government and there has been no time since that government existed that it has not been the target of intense Russian propaganda (and, also, war, the Russo-Ukrainian war having been launched by Russia as a direct and immediate response to the Maidan Revolution.)
As far as I know, Ukraine never had a military big enough to actually do any invasion of other countries, but if Ukraine was the size of the US with the military of the US, I wouldn't bet on them not being horrible when invading other countries.
Russia is systematically deporting Ukrainian children to Russia and integrating them into Russian families as a matter of state policy.
They're also indiscriminately bombing civilian targets weekly.
Even during the worst days of Fallujah, the US and UK didn't pull back and just arbitrarily pound the city to dust with standoff munitions out of spite.
Ukraine inherited a substantial amount of Soviet materiel after the collapse of the USSR, as well as the personnel trained in its use, however this quickly deteriorated as the support industrial base was in tatters (in Ukraine and Russia).
But in the early 90s they absolutely could have made a very credible invasion against most of their neighbors. [0,1]
Especially, say, the Cobasna ammunition depot in Moldova that's right on their border with up to 20,000 tons of Soviet munitions. [2]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperati...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobasna_ammunition_depot
It didn’t stop them from taking part in the invasion of Iraq:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
