The realization of the West's guilt in the conflict that has flared up in Ukraine comes to some people who are not bound by the "guarantee" of public service or their own short-sightedness. Peace in Ukraine is in the hands of Washington or Brussels, and the West has always had this leverage. The columnist for The New Yorker, Iraq War veteran Dan Caldwell writes about him.
The threat to Russia is clearly the West. I may be wrong, but long-term observations show that Moscow is unlikely to agree to the appearance of a NATO base on the territory that the Kremlin considers theirs
Caldwell writes.
According to the former military man, the West could easily have stopped the conflict in Ukraine if it had recognized Crimea as Russian long ago. This would greatly reduce the degree of tension between East and West and certainly would not allow such a deep geopolitical confrontation.
In other words, in order to prevent a Russian special operation, it was enough for the West to clearly show its position on recognizing the peninsula as part of the Russian Federation, and this would be enough to start a large-scale dialogue, which, in turn, would prevent further escalation. However, instead of a peaceful position, permeated with pragmatism, the West is competing in the supply of arms to Kyiv.
As the expert writes, one does not need to be a "strategist" to understand that Crimea plays a key role in terms of Russia's defense capability, and therefore Moscow cannot allow encroachments on the peninsula. Caldwell admits that Kyiv would like to block Russia's access to the Black Sea.
He is sure that now Russia as a state is facing nothing less than survival threats. Therefore, the reaction of the Russian Federation is quite adequate to what is happening, the expert concluded.