When the West ousted Yanokovich and set all this in motion, it gambled, and it lost.
Sanctions haven't worked, and Russia is winning on the battlefield.
Time to come down off the high horse and face reality.
Discussion
Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of young men to a foreign colonization adventure, and almost a million more are casualties, while its economy slowly collapses, it's most-lucrative trade markets melt away, it's energy supplies are dwindling, inflation is stubbornly high, and it turns itself into a national pariah reduced to accepting aid from North Korea and being turned into China's vassal state.
All while it becomes more-rapidly islamicized than even France, but is afraid to do anything about it because so many of its troops are Muslim. The Russian government and the imams (and Orthodox leadership) are in cahoots, encouraging young men to march into battle against the infidels, Nazis, whatever.
If this is winning, is the question. I think Russia has taken a wrong turn and will struggle to ever recover from this. Every day it fights, takes it further down this road.
The EU was demilitarizing and launching massive trade deals with Russia, when Russia first invaded the Krim, but the invasion quickly reversed all of that. I hope it was worth it, for Russia.
We shall see.
Also, there has been a quiet, steady, crippling brain-drain from Russia to NATO and EU countries (Turkey, Germany, USA, Switzerland, etc.).
Those people are not going to return.
Crimea seceded by referendum.
Thats a long message, thanks for giving me something to read and think about. 🤙
The 2014 referendum was held _after_ the Russian military annexed Crimea, and Russia sent the only allowed poll observers. The ballot had only two options (join Russia or go back to the 1992 constitution); the option to remain part of Ukraine was omitted.
The turnout was supposedly 83% and 97% approved the Russian option, which meant nearly all of the ethnic Ukrainians and Tartars would have had to approve. But the Tartars actually boycotted the election.
Typical Russian election. The overwhelming majority of the UN refused to accept the results.
Putin has openly admitted all of this.