[fractallyte]

"Russia then occupied and annexed Crimea, and in August 2014 Russia's military invaded eastern Ukraine to support its separatist proxies. Because of this, in December 2014 Ukraine's parliament voted to seek NATO membership, and in 2018 it voted to enshrine this goal in its constitution." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations)

A full ten months elapsed before Ukraine finally decided to change its constitution. That rather destroys your argument.

[morshu9001]

Russia attacked directly after Ukraine removed their nonalignment leadership. I'm not saying Ukraine changed its constitution before the attack, just that the 2010 law was evidently possible to reverse.

Even if Russia didn't attack, Ukraine would've gone back to NATO alignment just as they were doing pre 2010. Maybe even more seeing how the entire point of the 2014 revolution was to push away from agreements with Russia, and the protest leaders were all loudly pro-NATO politicians. How could this possibly have led to nonalignment, aside from "this is a Russian talking point"?

[fractallyte]

russia attacked on the basis of a presumption, not a fact. (And, considering the stakes, that was a colossal presumption to make...)

Furthermore, nowhere, in any of his speeches, did Putin refer to this presumption. He pretends that 2010-2014 never happened, which is a lie.