The US specifically stated the Memorandum had assurances, not guarantees, broke the Memorandum by intervening in Belarus via sanctions in 2013.

“Although the Memorandum is not legally binding, we take these political commitments seriously and do not believe any U.S. sanctions, whether imposed because of human rights or non-proliferation concerns, are inconsistent with our commitments to Belarus under the Memorandum or undermine them. Rather, sanctions are aimed at securing the human rights of Belarusians and combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other illicit activities, not at gaining any advantage for the United States”.

Steven Pifer, US ambassador to Ukraine:

“American officials decided the assurances would have to be packaged in a document that was not legally-binding. Neither the Bush nor Clinton administrations wanted a legal treaty that would have to be submitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification. State Department lawyers thus took careful interest in the actual language, in order to keep the commitments of a political nature. U.S. officials also continually used the term “assurances” instead of “guarantees,” as the latter implied a deeper, even legally-binding commitment of the kind that the United States extended to its NATO allies”.

So basically, the idea is that the US is never allowed to sanction Belarus for anything at all, ever again because doing so for ANY reason at all, regardless of how justified it may be, is always going to be considered “economic coercion designed to subordinate [them] to their own interest”. When we’re making a comparison to Russia militarily invading and actually directly violating the sovereignty of Ukraine, that’s pretty weak. I can’t say I terribly care on this one. I’d be willing to review other sources, but it’s hard to find much on a search that’s about that instead of more recent events.

The fact that Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to secede from the Banderites in Kiev is not suspicious unless you don’t think it’s rational to be fearful of fascists. You don’t actually have evidence undermining it, so you just say you’re skeptical to the point of believing it.

Oh, there’s another option. Russia clearly does not have much respect for the democratic process beyond its capacity to justify things to the populace. I am extremely distrustful of Russia running an election in any capacity, especially one that just so happens to justify the invasion they already started.

Image of Ukrainian Nazis that doesn’t seem to quote properly

I’ve seen some stuff about this, and let me preface this by saying fuck Nazis with something sharp and rusty, but the one thing that never seems to come up is how prevalent it is. Pretty much every predominantly white western nation has some shithead portion of the population that supports Nazism, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a sizable portion of the population. Any time I’ve asked for more info on the matter, I’ve never been provided with anything that can prove these sorts of pictures are anything more than very heavily cherry picked photos.

That said, it’s alarming that any military group would be comfortable posing for those photos, regardless of how big the group is. I’d be willing to look at anything you might be able to share that would show this is systemic, but like I said, nobody ever seems to have anything like that handy when they want to bring up the pictures.

What is interesting is that you’re now denying the Russian ethnicity of much of the Donbass region, implying that they are all Ukrainian.

No, I’m speaking in terms of nationality, and you’re speaking here in terms of ethnicity. Ukraine has been independent from Russia for almost 35 years. I understand that some people in the area are ethnically Russian, especially in eastern Ukraine, and they may identify more as Russian than Ukrainian at this point, even after 35 years. If the vote had been held under more trustworthy circumstances, I’d be more inclined to trust it, but you’re telling me that Russia ran an election after they seized the area by force, and I should just believe Russia when they say people voted for what Russia wanted at a rate of 19 to 1? Yeah, no. Had they held the vote FIRST and the Ukrainian government told them “tough shit, you’re staying”, I might be inclined to side with secession as it would be clearly the desire of the local population, but Russia muddied the waters waaaaaaaay too much for anyone who pays attention to just take their word for it now.

The ethnic Russians in the Donbass region are why Russia intervened at the request of the LPR and DPR, as Russia is governed by nationalists.

The requests that we already established came after Russia seized the region, yes. The requests whose validity can very reasonably be questioned given this is a captured government making a request in line with the desires of the captor. Can you provide any evidence that this was widely supported in the region before Russia invaded? Because “man with metaphorical Russian gun to head says thing Russia wants said” is not a massive point in your favor.

The Banderites had been killing the seperatists in the Donbass region for nearly a decade before Russia stepped in.

This is difficult to research given the time distance unless you know the right keywords to use in the search, so I’m open to good resources on this, but it’s not one I’m having an easy time looking into myself.

This is the map pointing to the modern division in Ukraine, between the seperatists in the Donbass that side with Russia and the Banderites that side with Kiev, which faction has influence where.

Cool, do you have anything that’s not twenty years old? Or at least something that’s not ten years older than the invasion? Ten years of the wrong policy could have pissed off a lot of those blue regions, so I’m not sure this is an appropriate data point. It shows some important history, sure, but it may not accurately reflect things at the appropriate time or today.