I do think that the West mishandled this and should have taken Russian threats more serious. But that goes many years back evne before Ukraine. Russia has long complained about NATO expansion.

But I don't think we should turn this into some evil 4D chess by the West. There is no evil cabal of policy makers pulling the strings. A lot of these things happen because many people in the West would like to see Ukraine welcomed into the Western sphere.

The problem here is more of naivity than malice. People did not take Russian threats serious. Ukraine also should have understood that the West did NOT have its back. Why should we? Ukraine was not a NATO member. If we had their back, why would they be eager to be NATO member?

The whole point of NATO is that once you are in, we got your back. When you are not inside, we don't have your back. It cannot be any other way.

I don't think anybody in the West wants this conflict with Russia. Maybe some Neocon hawks in Washignton somewhere but in Europe we certainly don't want it. We depend a lot on Russia for a gas, oil nuclear fuel and a host of other things. This conflict will cause problems for everyone. Sanctions on Russia does not just hurt Russia. They also hurt us.

I have never met anyone in Europe who want to "defeat" Russia. I grew up in the cold war and we never talked about the USSR as some evil empire the way Americans did. We live right next to Russia and have a very different experience. My home country Norway got partially liberated by the Red Army.

In Norther Norway there is a lot of exchange between Russians and Norwegians. We got signs in Norwegian and Russian and many Norwegian and Russians are friends with each other. We travel across each others border for shopping, hanging out. I have worked with many Russians in Norway. Great people. There is also a fair number of Norwegians who are married to Russians.

But of course the relation with Russia has always been a troubled one. But there has always been our hope that Russia can become normal. We don't want to destroy Russia. We want Russia to become a normal democratic country like the rest of us.

I don't think so badly about Ukranians that I believe they would suddenly attack people in the West, even if they felt betrayed. I have much more faith in the Ukrainian people. They don't seem vengeful to me. Even now despite being attacked by Russia, they are not showing that much anger towards Russians.

Anyway you cannot easily transport miiltary grade weapons around in Europe. Just sending a regular gun around is hard enough.

I think Ukraine should have the right to join NATO if they want to, but at the same time we should have been more realistic and made it clear to Russia that they will have to wait. We have to deail with the reality that Putin is in charge, until a more democratic and sane leader gets power in Russia.

But now it may be too late. Putin is screwed up. It seems likely that Finland and Sweden will join NATO. The opposite of what Russia wanted.