I don't have a Twitter account but THIS neocon propaganda warrants a response

Firstly, Russia is the aggressor here. Not us.

This is 100% false.

https://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2014/02/20/ukraines-crisis-not-ours/

What kind of democracy is it where a democratically elected president can be forced out of office by mobs?

President Obama is telling the Yanukovych government to respect the protesters. No violence. But how would Obama react if thousands of Tea Party members established an encampment on the Mall, burned down the DNC, occupied the Capitol and demanded he either repeal Obamacare or resign? Would Barack Obama negotiate?

Russia has accused us of meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs. And when we see the State Department’s Victoria Nuland in Maidan Square egging on the protesters, and hear tape of Nuland discussing with the U.S. ambassador whom we want in the next Ukrainian government, do not the Russians have a point? And was it not interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine for John McCain to fly to Kiev, go down to Maidan Square, and do his best imitation of Mario Savio in Sproul Plaza? If the Cold War is over, why are we playing these Cold War games?

https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2022/01/04/the-specter-of-world-war-iii-handiwork-of-washingtons-busy-bodies-and-hegemonists/

One of the worst aspects of the internet enabled 24/7 news cycle is the giant memory hole embedded within it. That is to say, if the latest information content is “breaking news”, no matter how incidental, trivial, misleading or flat-out untruthful, it makes the cut. But more often than not, that’s all she wrote. Context and history get minimized at best and downright obliterated most of the time. That’s clearly the case with the ongoing saga of the alleged Russian threat to America’s security and especially the manifestation of that threat in the Ukrainian theater of confrontation. The truth is, owing to the endless “breaking news” syndrome, the Ukraine matter is a national security molehill that’s been transformed into a mountain.

https://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2022/01/10/where-does-nato-enlargement-end/

Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, "NATO never promised not to admit new members; it could not and would not." But this is nonsense. There is no requirement that the US admit to NATO any or all nations that apply for admission. For whatever reasons we choose, we can veto any applicant.

Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan disagreed often but did agree on this: U.S.-NATO war guarantees stopped at the Elbe. Beyond the river in Germany, we battled the USSR with weapons of diplomacy, politics, and economics, not weapons of war. How would we have reacted if, after losing the Cold War, we were treated to Russian warships on Lake Ontario and Moscow giving Canada war guarantees?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea

"In 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire as the result of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Crimea became an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR in the Soviet Union. In 1954, the Soviet Union transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR from the Russian SFSR." Crimea wasn't even a part of Ukraine until 1954.

Six Things the Media Won’t Tell You About Ukraine.

https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2022/01/05/six-things-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-ukraine/

"Western media and political analysts have cast Putin’s demands that NATO not expand further east to Ukraine and that NATO not establish military bases in former Soviet states nor use them to carry out military activity as bold and impossible."

"The US is threatened by Russia’s activity because Russia has drawn the line and is no longer playing a submissive and cooperative role in the US led world order. The Eastern Ukraine-Russian border is the line over which the battle of US hegemony is being fought. But the Western media won’t tell you that."

What’s Actually Happening in Ukraine?

https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2022/01/26/whats-actually-happening-in-ukraine/

"Western media and Western governments are all telling us one thing. But, suddenly, the actual players are all telling us another. Is it possible that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed an opportune situation too far and is now afraid of what he has unleashed?"

"Russia finally drew the line. Prior to 2014, Russia had accepted its subordinate role to the West and compromised on all disagreements with the US. At Ukraine, Putin drew the line. He refused to accept the US’s hegemonic rules and stood up to the unipolar world. He defended Russia’s interests and asserted itself as a balancing pole in a multipolar world. That is why the US is so threatened by Russia’s demands for security assurances. It is not about Ukraine: it is about the line over which the battle to maintain the US led unipolar world will be fought."

"Zelensky may have exploited this situation to advance his NATO ambitions. But having called for weapons and troops, he now finds his nation in the middle of a potential war in which his country will become the battle ground. Perhaps that is why he may now be attempting to disarm the situation."

Do you really think that allowing Russia to invade a sovereign nation without repercussions would have positive implications for the global system?

https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2022/01/04/the-specter-of-world-war-iii-handiwork-of-washingtons-busy-bodies-and-hegemonists/

Of course, on top of that yawning gap in terms of economic wherewithal to mount a military threat in this age of high tech, capital intensive warfare (as opposed to military might based upon conscripted human canon fodder), there is an additional $18.5 trillion of European/NATO GDP. So NATO as a whole has $40 trillion of GDP or 27X the paltry economic output of Russia.

At the end of the day, the entire Russian threat narrative is based on a structural absurdity: Namely, that given the vast disproportion of economic girth and military might between NATO and the Russian Federation that Moscow’s steely-eyed ruler (there are no committees, coalitions or alliances in Putin’s Russia to complicate strategy) is hell bent on committing national suicide in behalf of reviving the old Soviet Empire – which itself is a canard invented in the Washington beltway, not a strategy that Putin has ever advocated or taken steps to realize.

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And we can't ignore the fact that U.S. / NATO have acted in bad faith.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_intervention_in_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina

https://original.antiwar.com/malic/2005/03/24/an-evil-little-war/

https://www.antiwar.com/justin/j031403.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya

NATO has not been a defensive alliance since 1995.

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Why is NATO-in-Ukraine completely unacceptable to Russia?

The answer is very simple. Just look at the map of the region and learn the history of World War 2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Blue

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Eastern_Front_1942-05_to_1942-11.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO#/media/File:Location_NATO_2017_blue.svg

NATO already has the ability to quickly invade Northwestern Russia and occupy Saint Petersburg.

NATO bases in Ukraine would give NATO the ability to launch a massive and devastating conventional attack into Russia's heartland.

This gives Russia only 3 bad options:

1. Maintain a very large standing army and air force in Northwest and Southwest Russia to counter this threat. Russia can't afford this.

2. Use tactical nuclear weapons if NATO attacks. This might not be possible if Russia's tactical nukes are destroyed in a pre-emptive strike by NATO air forces.

3. Quickly surrender. Russia can't afford this. They obviously don't want to become another Serbia or Iraq.

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TL;DR

Russia is not the villain in this conflict.