You either support countries' right to self-determination or you don't. What happened in Ukraine and Georgia since 2008 is the equivalent of the United States r

You either support countries' right to self-determination or you don't. What happened in Ukraine and Georgia since 2008 is the equivalent of the United States repeatedly overthrowing democratically elected governments in Canada and Mexico, invading their provinces, then acting all surprised when citizens of those countries no longer want anything to do with the US and getting aggrieved about their "sphere of influence" and "buffer zone" shrinking. You can't maintain a "sphere of influence" if you antagonize all the countries in it. You might notice that a lot of things happened in Russia internally since 2008 that indicate it's not a healthy society. While Putin is definitely the animus behind much of that and is fabulously, perhaps singularly evil, fundamentally the problem is people believing this "sphere of influence" crap instead of accepting countries' right to free association, territorial integrity and self-determination.