One of my favorite examples is making Ukraine independant from russian gas! So the western countries buyed gas from Russia and sold it to Ukraine for a higher price ;D LOL that's great and lovely!!!! Real Chuzpe! Real friends! Prior Ukraine was getting a discount on russian gas and they were sometimes not able to pay these reduced prices ;D LOL.
They are trying the same thing on Germany and the EU... don't buy evil Russian aggression juice.... take our freedom gas... in other words don't fund Russian growth and development, fund our growth and development.
But now it's happened, Ukraine is living on handouts and needs billions and maybe even trillions of investment (which will be very slow due to corruption levels) and it will take decades not 1-3 years as the Ukrainians had hoped for.
Their fundamental problem is that they cut off their main and primary customer... and for no good reason other than the US and EU demanded it.
The pivotal moment was the offer from the EU and the offer from the Russians... as far as the Russians were concerned their offer was not exclusive, but from the EU and US side theirs was.
They made the correct choice and then the west regime changed them into taking the wrong choice and the wrong choice has been hitching themselves up to the EU wagon because the Ukraine has no value to the EU economically... anything good they have like engines or rocket technology is new competition for existing EU companies so those respective countries governments are going to do all they can to destroy anything in the Ukraine that could damage their monopoly within the EU. Ask any business owner what it would mean to them in hard times to cut themselves off from 60% of their best customers for no good reason.
Russian investment is still the bulk of the money going in to the Ukraine right now... of course I don't count loans because that all has to be paid back with interest.
The situation in the Ukraine now is a good example of how imperial European powers treat other bits of territory... and that is how they see it... bits of territory with resources there. They are not going to spend money building it up and fixing things... they would rather fix the problems in their own countries first and they are not even doing that... they have no kinship, no connection to Ukrainians except that they both fear and hate Russians... divide and conquer...
The amusing thing is that it will all be Russias fault... they didn't fight hard enough to save us, or they tricked us into going this way...
The simple fact is that in the early 2000s very few Russians had very much to be proud of and possibly would have jumped at the fast track ticket to EU and even HATO membership, confidence in the Russian military was at a serious low, and in many regards for good reason... they had not been funded properly like most things.
But put smart people in charge... Putin didn't work alone, and of course a lot of hard work and the transformation has been dramatic... one could say the split happened in 2014, but it was happening long before that... the Ukraine took the Russian deal because it was by far and away the best offer of the two... there was no way you could call the government and leadership of the time pro Russian in any way shape or form... they were hostile to Russia... but not moron ideological zealots like those that have followed... and those in both parties in the US.
Opposition parties in the UK and France seem to be open to working with Putin, whereas neither parties in the US could go forward with such a policy... look at what happened to Trump... he changed direction like a spinning top. Of course the irony is that Biden is essentially moving forward with most of the same policies but no criticism at all... the man can do no wrong and comedians and media fear criticising him... perhaps they expect him to drop dead at any minute.