Words of a Watchman

In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych was democratically elected in an internationally recognized vote. In February 2014, he was removed from office through a parliamentary procedure that did not follow Ukraine’s constitutional impeachment requirements.

During the crisis, Western governments were not neutral observers:

U.S. officials were actively involved in shaping Ukraine’s post-Yanukovych political leadership.

EU foreign ministers brokered and helped structure political transition agreements.

Western institutions openly supported the protest movement’s geopolitical orientation toward the EU.

The result was an extra-constitutional regime change in a country sitting directly on Russia’s strategic border.

Russia’s subsequent seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine were reactions to that rupture. Whether one approves of Moscow’s response is separate from the causal chain: the 2014 Western-backed political reversal of a sitting elected president destabilized the state and triggered the conflict spiral.

You cannot detach the 2022 war from the 2014 constitutional break.