Well, RussiaRussiaRussia was the country that INVADED UkraineUkraineUkraine.
John Mearsheimer - probably the leading geopolitical scholar in the US today - in 2015:
“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked .... What we’re doing is in fact encouraging that outcome.”
CIA director Bill Burns in 2008:
“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for [Russia]” and “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests”
Sir Roderic Lyne, former British ambassador to Russia, warned a year ago that “[pushing] Ukraine into NATO [...] is stupid on every level.” He adds “if you want to start a war with Russia, that’s the best way of doing it.”
Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Institute’s senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies, wrote in a 1994 book that NATO expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of Russia.”
Today he adds “we are now paying the price for the US’s arrogance”.