The quoted parts have nothing to with how the events really unfolded. US military aid to Ukraine remained at stable 300-400m USD per year in the six years preceding the full-scale invasion - without a "counter-escalation". The opposite happened: by 2021, the fighting in Ukraine had died down to sniping and sporadic shelling on the frontline. Ukrainian losses for the entire year were 79 soldiers.
If anything, the greatest single US-related factor for the full-scale invasion was the humiliating retreat from Kabul, which signaled that the US would not stand by its commitments. Russian planning for the invasion began around the time of the retreat.
>>>Russian planning for the invasion began around the time of the retreat.
Do you have a source for that? I'd love to read any insight into that process.
My personal, totally unsubstantiated, opinion is that Russia began planning an invasion in 2019 after Poroshenko signed a Constitutional Amendment pledging Ukraine to seek NATO membership, which was followed up by Zelensky promising a NATO referendum the same year.[1][2]
I suspect Putin initiated planning but was unprepared for anything prior to mid-2020....and then invasion planning was derailed by COVID. Forces couldn't be postured until they got that mess under control, and then you also need a big annual exercise as pretext for moving that much combat power into their assembly areas. Hmmmm....I need to go back and take a hard look at the early force flows, as well as Russian rhetoric in response to the 2019 political decisions by Ukraine.
