Americans are glibly uninformed and ignore history in all foreign conflicts. The obvious coup against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the replacement of his government for a NATO-friendly faction that included a considerable number of self-avowed Nazis in 2014 caused considerable doubt among soviet experts that Ukraine's independence would continue to be accepted by Putin.

Those experts were proven correct when Putin reclaimed the critical shipping and military installation in Crimea, but the western media failed to mention the fact that Crimeans mostly identified as Russians or that they never adopted the Ukrainian language, even in their street signage or literature. Ignoring both economic and cultural differences between Russia and Ukraine in setting boundaries made it obvious to Putin that the intent was to capture the resources and infrastructure that delivered Russian oil and gas to the EU market.

The illusion of America as an uninterested bystander in this dispute is just that, an illusion perpetrated by our media. The fact that Biden had a personal stake in Ukraine's future oil and gas production was made public when his son was outed as a totally unqualified board member of the Ukrainian oil and gas industry received over $60k per month for doing nothing. Selling access is the mainstay business model for neoliberal Democrats and this was too blatant to deny.