from all i can discover this site is a 'just the facts' site without a starting point like supporting the empire or other such foolishness. this author provides a good take on the current ukraine scene, and its likely outcome;

By Ben Aris in Berlin February 24, 2022

Russia has attacked Ukraine. We have moved into the third phase of this showdown. Until recently I have argued that there will be no invasion since the first reports came out, but at that time it was clear the military build-up was designed to kick-start the talks on security and Putin was successful in that. The military threat was a means to an end: to start security talks and as long as those talks were ongoing there was no danger of an invasion. Those talks failed last week, so we have moved to the next stage.

The thing with threats is, they are meaningless unless you are prepared to follow through – and who doubts Putin’s resolve to use his military to get what he wants. He has said from the beginning that he would resort to “military/technical” means to enforce his demand to get his security deal. He also made it clear that he was not prepared to do protracted talks and he’s been true to his word.  

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued its demands in December. That kicked off the first round of diplomacy with the US in January. That failed at the end of that month with the US “no to no Nato” letter. French President Emmanuel Macron kicked off a second round of EU diplomacy by pushing for the implementation of the Minsk II deal. But that came to nothing last week when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy refused to do it, calling it “vapid” and a “waste of time.” That made some sort of military move by Russia inevitable as a threat of an attack is the only leverage the Kremlin has over the West.  

As an aside, I’m now wondering if actually the US understood this very clearly from the beginning: it took Putin at his word that he would use his military, but it also had decided at the start that the West would never concede a new security deal. That made invasion a certainty.  ......read more.........