Frederick. Thanks for your thoughtful response.

As someone who had had a minor mental illness for many years and being around people with minor mental illnesses, there is a pattern: People with minor mental illnesses tend to blame other people for their troubles AND do not recognize their own ailment. So they do not repair what is truly wrong and continue with the blame game, probably for the rest of their life.

We could say the same pattern applies for nations.

History since WW2 has proved that the odds are not very good of a big power invading a small power and somehow coming out ahead. This is why the NATO excuse is so absurd. Even if the USA et al wanted to invade and occupy Russia, it knows it could not hold it for long.

The NATO excuse is only smokescreen for an elite group of Russian politicians to mask the money they have been stealing from the Russian and Ukrainian economies. "NATO is going to invade us" is better than "we have moved $100b of your money into our Swiss bank accounts."

Ukraine was making moves to end the Russian meddling of the Ukrainian economy. That is why this war was started.

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I could argue that the people in back decision rooms should have anticipated the NATO excuse, and developed policies around that. I don't have an answer around that. But I don't think the answer should have been to let Ukraine slide into total Russian hegemony.

The Ukrainian people wanted out of Russian influence. In the same way Americans wanted out of British influence.

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BTW, I also believe that if Russian actually had a first-rate military, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would have been next. NATO would not have protected them.