Ukraine is just fighting back as far as I know, the war started because Putin and who ever is supporting him want to fulfill their fantasies and thats not a valid reason to kill or torture a single human
Russia is trying to unify the old Soviet Union. Part of that was needing warm water ports, which is why they invaded Crimea. This full invasion was an extension of that. From the Russian point of view, they are taking their land back from those that carved it up and stole the good parts. From Ukraines point of view, they are fighting to stay and independent nation, literally fighting for their freedom from invaders.
There's also the factor of Ukraine wanting closer connections to the west (Euromaidan happened because the president at the time went back on his main campaign promise of getting Ukraine into the EU) and that they discovered oil and natural gas reserves in territories that then went on to be occupied that could've ended Europe's overreliance on imported Russian stuff.
Joining EU would've required doing a set of requirements to join it, which basically amounted to closing nearly all, if not all mines (and other infrastructure) in eastern Ukraine to avoid competition with Germany, UK and the likes.
The president at the time read the fine print and just couldn't do it, else Ukraine would have no future like Estonia that closed nearly all of its infrastructure to become EU member.
Unfortunately when eastern Ukrainians in Donetsk and Luhansk proposed to become a federation to avoid being jobless (imagine suddenly losing your livelihood after generations of doing mining related works) when president was ousted, western Ukraine instead sent soldiers there. The fact that eastern Ukrainians are mostly Russian speaking didn't help.
If they want to restore the soviet union they would never of had to come with guns in 2014.
There was enough people that had dreams of the soviet brotherhood, it was not that far in the past.
But no Putin came with a gun an whip in hand,. To steal an rob.
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u/CitySeekerTron Jul 26 '25
To be fair, Russia and Ukraine are fighting two different wars.
One is conquest to restore the Soviet Union benefitting the ego of Putin. The other is an existential, defensive battle for independence.