> You do realize of course that the Russians had already signed the Budapest Memorandum in which the Russian Federation would not use military or economic force

> You do realize of course that the Russians had already signed the Budapest Memorandum in which the Russian Federation would not use military or economic force against Ukraine except in self defence? Not only military, but also economic and political coercion. In hindsight it was a huge mistake when the US established it as not binding in order to sanction Belarus in 2013. > Or Russia's insistence that the Little Green Men in Crimea were not Russians forces I'm not sure on this, but it not unlikely Russia could not officially act until the "Republic of Crimea" requested it. That's why local militias from overseas were decided by themselves to organize an "election" about whether the "Republic of Crimea" should declare independence or on the other hand if the "Republic of Crimea" should declare independence. And afterwards these militias finally got to join the Russian forces, for which they all had completed the necessary paperwork years ago. > And that the invasion of Ukraine was justified in removing Nazis. This completely breaks my mind as well. Sure, Ukraine has a very ... odd ... relationship with their Nazi past, but Putin was acting as if the Nazis from the dark side of the moon had descended upon Ukraine. And then this issue is turned into a "btw. footnote" during all negotiation attempts. Also him going on Tucker and starting to ramble about the Cro Magnon making "Rus! Rus!" noises when hunting after mammoths on the future territory of Ukraine. What sent me down the rabbit hole of what is probably actually going on was Gorbachev telling journalists that "he's rewatched Putins speech on the 2007 Munich Security Conference" when asked why this war is happening. That was just before his death. On the other hand, we shouldn't underestimate Putin. The guy had unrestricted access to some of the world's best intelligence services for decades, hundreds of analysts looking at every situation from every angle, a direct line of communication to absolutely anyone he wants, unmatched political experience and worst of all, he's devilish smart. There's probably not a single person on earth who could figure out Putin's true intentions and ways of thinking if he intended to keep them hidden. > What exactly would make you think think Russia's promises about a peace agreement are worth any more then the agreement they've already willingly broken? These agreements do not exist in a vacuum. There are motivations behind this war and these might be perfectly addressable via peaceful means. That the US and Russia are now talking makes this even more likely. Most people dont believe this, but Russia doesnt want Ukrainian territory except for Crimea (due to its strategic control over the Strait of Kerch, I assume). This is because of the utter mess it'll cause in the future. Even before the current war (2022) Ukraine was the single most mined country in the world. The amount of explosives out in the open is beyond mind boggling and the war was just making it ever more worse. Then there's the wide spread destruction caused by the Donbass conflict since 2014 and the huge amounts of weapons floating around. Now you annex that territory. Suddenly you've got yourself a whole army of well trained, well armed and very disgruntled former Ukrainians. So on top of all the previous problems you've signed yourself up for, you've now got yourself an entire new population of people relying on welfare, because all of the economy in their area was destroyed, millions of homeless, because their cities were destroyed, and many of them are willing to launch the largest insurgency of the century against you and are perfectly trained and equipped to do so. Every piece of Ukraine Russia tries to gobble up will poison it for decades. IMO Russia is genuinely scared of Ukraine joining NATO, hence when Ukraine joined the NATO EOP program (used by Sweden and Finland to join NATO) Russia began preparing the 2022 invasion.