That is probably true. To avoid this, all Ukraine had to do was implement Minsk II. The Donbas would have remained part of Ukraine with some autonomy. Ukraine signed Minsk II, but never implemented.
Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande have all now admitted that there was never any intention to implement Minsk, just buy time to prepare for war. Russia feels made a fool of, and is pissed. Now you got the war that the west asked for.
The West thought (as did I, TBH) that the financial sanctions would really crush Russia. Didn't work out that way.
The West thought that the 8 years of preparation would stop Russia militarily. Certainly Russia is having more trouble than they expected.
Russia and Ukraine had a 15 point peace plan in March of last year. In April, the West (Boris Johnson representing the US / UK / NATO) crushed the peace plan.
Whatever deal Ukraine gets now, barring NATO troops entering** will be worse than they would have gotten in Minsk II.
** even if NATO enters all that means is WWIII, and the odds are we all die then.
The world isn't fair, and situations exist that suck. The US is an empire in decline. Empires in decline use war instead of diplomacy to achieve ends. Russia is a rising power after their massive fall after the end of the USSR.
Ukraine has the bad / good luck to be next door to Russia, a huge military might and the largest nuclear power in the world. Picking a fight with Russia was a very risky plan. Ukraine chose that plan. There is a pretty famous saying, "If you come at the king, you better not miss."
100s of thousands of people are dead now, with who knows how many to die. Billions of € / $ / Hrywnja have been lost, with who know how many more to be lost. Donbas autonomy instead of this looks like it would have been a better deal.
I'm not saying Russia was "good" in invading. I am definitely saying that taking money from the US to overthrow the democratically elected government in 2014 in an armed coup was a bad decision.
The history of the US is filled with cases of the US funding revolutions not for the good of the people in that country, but to install/prop up a puppet government that allows the US to dictate foreign policy and US companies to get sweetheart business deals. Ukraine is just the latest country to be destroyed when the plan goes bad.
Argentina, Panama, Vietnam, Honduras, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria are some of the other countries destroyed or partially destroyed by the US in the same way Ukraine is being destroyed now.
I feel horrible for the averge people of Ukraine who have nothing to do with politics, which is most of the Ukrainians.
But extending the war is not going to change the result. It is just going to get more people killed and more of Ukraine destroyed.
