> The war started before that happened with the invasion of Crimea That wasn't a war though, nobody called it a war between Ukraine and Russia at the time. Rea

> The war started before that happened with the invasion of Crimea That wasn't a war though, nobody called it a war between Ukraine and Russia at the time. Read news from the time, no mention of war between Ukraine and Russia. The Ukraine war was very different than Russia other aggressions, the resource scarcity likely triggered this extra aggressive behavior. You can say this resource scarcity was ultimately their fault, but a starving beast will fight very aggressively regardless whose fault it is that its starving. If the Crimean water crisis didn't happen then likely Russia would just have continued to incite rebellions and annex territory that way, and not declare a full scale war. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html