This is a very naive reading of the Ukraine-Russian conflict. First of all, the conflict actually started in 2014 when Russia reacted by annexing Crimea after president Yanukovych was ousted following the Maidan uprising (which was carried out with EU/US support). Since then, there have been many skirmishes between Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatist groups in the Donbass region, before Russia escalated the conflict in 2022. You should know that Crimea and Donbass are regions of a Russian ethnical majority, and these people didn’t support the Maidan uprising.

Secondly, I am tired of people (especially liberals) which talk about laws, agreements and treaties as having some kind of supernatural power to stop things from happening. It’s as if treaties, laws, agreements and commitments were never broken in real life, as if there was a supreme mystical power that bounded every party to commit to them.

Ukraine is not under NATO in all but paper. Its troops were trained by NATO countries, they are being supplied by NATO countries, there are mercenaries (and clandestine troops) from NATO fighting in the frontlines, the intelligence provided to Ukraine is from NATO countries. Not only that but the top NATO members are overseeing all Ukraine political decisions. Ukraine is not in NATO today because NATO countries never wanted to be directly involved in the first place and just wanted that Ukraine and Russia to bleed each other for their benefit.

Today NATO is actually a means to make all members fund the US military industrial complex, and provide other material and human resources to US, Germany, France and UK imperialist adventures. To this day NATO was never used as a defensive alliance, but NATO was always used in offensives against other countries. If Russia was weak like Afghanistan, then I’m sure NATO would have advanced in full force, like they did after the 9/11 attacks.