With the Russians massing 100,000 troops near Ukraine, and Western media continue to vilify Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the blame for the current crisis in Eastern Europe is being laid solely at the feet of Russia. A Russian invasion of all or part of Ukraine would be horrible and unneeded aggression against a sovereign state, especially when that nation's armed forces present little threat to Russia. However, little acknowledged in Western media and elite circles in the West, especially in the capitals of countries composing the U.S.-led NATO alliance, is a Western share of the blame for the current crisis.

To stand down his invasion threat, Putin has demanded that NATO formally renounce the addition of Ukraine and Georgia to the alliance and troop deployments and movements in NATO countries near Russia. George W. Bush foolishly promised in 2008 that those countries would eventually be accepted into the alliance. Equally questionable was the U.S. reiteration of that promise in the summer 2021. The latter pronouncement likely triggered the Russian troop build-up on three sides of Ukraine.

Russia has long considered Ukraine to be very strategic. A significant part of the former Soviet Union's industrial and agricultural capacity was in Ukraine, in addition to a very important Black Sea naval base in Crimea—which Russia, via armed force in 2014, returned to Russia for the first time since the 1950s. Equally important, Putin, despite being an unlikeable autocratic despot, has genuine security concerns in the approaches to western Russia, which includes the capital Moscow. Over the centuries, Russia has been invaded from the flat terrain of Eastern Europe, including what is now the Baltics, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. Napoleon Bonaparte of France made it all the way to Moscow before the winter caused him to retreat; the Germans in World War I menaced western Russia and forced the Russians out of the conflict; and the Russians lost 25-28 million souls stopping Adolf Hitler's multi-pronged devastating invasion north-to-south during World War II.