Tux

To pretend that the collective West faced an easy decision in 2014 is as absurd as pretending that the collective West handled it perfectly. It's also simply not true that Putin thought the West was a paper napkin, tiger or any other flimsy metaphor. Every step he took was correctly calculated until last February to approach the line that might trigger a strong US/EU response but not cross it. Then, quite obviously, he did. It's not *our* miscalculation that led to Russia invading Ukraine...it was Putin's. And it's worth noting...between Western actions and sanctions...Russia's geopolitical situation was *declining* steadily before he made the decision to invade. That's *why* he did it. 
 
 

On the aid to Ukraine question, pro or con, it would be a lot more illuminating if every reaction was informed by the idea that both sides have their interests, their domestic politics and nothing close to complete information. 
To Haiduk, et alia...it's worth remembering that the US POTUS cannot act with complete freedom given the wider security responsibilities the US must fulfill and the domestic political landscape he must navigate here. That is assuredly frustrating for you given that you are in an existential knife fight but it's worth remembering that snarling at the hand that's feeding you ISR, weapons and supplies is unlikely to get you more...rather it's going to empower politicians here who want to give you less. Biden went way out on a limb to help Ukraine...to abuse another metaphor...don't help his enemies cut the branch. 
To the idea that primarily US and Western weaknesses and failures led to this war...sorry but that's just not on. Ukraine has its own domestic conditions that contributed and a geopolitical situation/history that is/was far more important. US power has limits and Ukraine had a difficult situation that had to become so regionally serious that the POTUS had to take a huge risk in extending it. Is that unfair, bitter and enraging? Of course. But to act as if Obama or Bush had a magic want to solve it is absurd. The US public wasn't remotely ready to go even part way to war over the Donbas/Crimea.
Do yourselves a favor and don't imagine for a second that "USA sucks!" is going to get you a single bullet or boot. It will do the opposite as we have plenty of politicians here who will use it in next year's budget fights.

And remember leave some slack for language barriers, too (which extend way past simple vocabulary differences into modes of expression).

Well we can start with places like the Balkans, East Timor, Mail and Nigeria - hell pick a spot in the MENA and we have been through this at some level.  The big ones are Iraq and Afghanistan of course - we actually had the ANA killing us in that one and we all know how it ended last summer.  
In fact pretty much all of our interventions over the last 30 years led us down this road - probably why the US public are really getting sick of them.  “Oh wait, these are all the US’s fault!”  Sure, everything is in some camps. And the west had nothing better to but go halfway around the world to try and stop someone else’s wars getting its young men killed in the process.
I do not believe the Ukrainian government actually believes in the sentiments being expressed here by some but you can see how it’s gets pretty frustrating.
 

I agree with the first part - a quick end, followed by a quick retirement of Putin may just seal this thing off.  That is a solid strategic end.
Problem is how people are linking Ways and Means to this.  Giving the UA another 200 tubes of artillery assumes they can generate quality crews to man then, logistics to maintain and support them, and C4ISR to integrate them.  This is the problem with the “steel mountain strategy” - which is right next to the “magic bullet” strategy - it does not take into account force generation and sustainment, let alone operational integration challenges.  
People are convinced if we gave the UA a division worth of M1s, Leo 2s, or whatever that this thing would be over next week.  Do any of you know how long it takes to create an modern armoured division with a whole new fleet of vehicles?  It takes us years. Now then UA is under pressure so they will accelerate it but Ukraines military force generation is pretty fragile right now. They are still sending troops to be trained in foreign countries. Getting up to speed on how to fight and sustain M1s is not a job done in a long weekend. In fact if we had sent them on 25 Feb, I am not convinced they would be ready for prime time right now.  The FCS requirements alone are pretty intense.  
Maybe this is a byproduct of a forum full of tactical war gamers who only see the last hour - they have very little idea of the months and years of work it takes to get that last hour to happen.
The only way to get 200 tubes of anything shooting effectively and sustaining that, quickly, is if we do it ourselves and that is a non-starter.  You will notice that the west has largely been sending the equipment that is easiest to set up and employ.  We have reports of the guns we sent with 1/3 out of battle rates - this is not because these guns suck, it is because keeping guns in continuous action is really hard and doing it with crews who had to learn then thing very fast, used them hard and have no real logistics system to support them.  

So what? Keep it simple, stupid. Double down on what is working.  Ramp up where we can. The West only has so much tolerance for investment in this war - we need to keep it focused and on point.  

Oh goodie, another war with a begrudging and resentful partner we are supposed to arm to the teeth, be continuously told we suck and are doing it wrong, and then enjoy the post war sh#t show as we have to sink billions more into a resentful nation to keep it propped up.
Seriously man, we get the frustration but why not follow the lead from your political leadership and offer a simple “thank you” now and again?

If there is one - just one! - thing we all should have learnt out of the last 20 years of misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, et al, it's that you can't kill your way out of an insurgency.
Should have, but apparently didn't.

Yeah. Sorry, I've better things to do with my time then trying to argue with people who behave like petulant teenagers. I am actually on your side and I was actually trying to help you. Time for the ignore button.

No, when and where did I say that? Don't twist my words or else this whole discussion is pointless.
 
I didn't say they should and I didn't say we shouldn't. Again, when and where did I say that?
I said we are not legally obliged to supply you with anything. Because we are not. Of course that doesn't have to prevent us from supplying you. It doesn't. We supply you. I said, we don't have to and so you have no lever on us to make demands. You can of course still demand whatever you want. Be my guest, I can deal with it. But go back and read what I actually tried to tell you: It hurts your cause. Yours. Not mine. So all this ranting at me is pointless. I was actually trying to help you understand why it hurts your cause. I was trying to explain to you how Germans tick and why I think your government makes a mistake in handling Germans the way they do if they are actually interested in getting what they want instead of just venting their frustration.
If you are not interested in that kind of insight and just want to do Germany Bashing, fine, have it your way, I hope it makes you feel better. As I said earlier, today is Germany Bashing Day, have fun. 😉

Because different countries have different contexts.
Do PzH2000 suck? What about those Gepards - are they worthless? Or the other 12B euros that Germany has provided? None of it is good enough until you get the specific toy you have a temporary hardon for?
Why arent you moaning that the US hasn't given you a Nimitz, or a satellite, or a wing of B-52s?

Ah, the Americans are not that bad

Then why take the bloody risk?  Ukraine can nibble the RA operational system and have demonstrate it very well against mainstream predictions.  However, you are upscaling linearly on both risk, cost and opportunity.  In order to incremental erode Russias broader strategic capability and capacity to prosecute this war and fundamentally change conditions we are not talking about a few demonstrations with ATACMS.  Back over the summer the UA fired hundreds of HIMARS at RA logistics and effectively crippled them - that wasn’t “nibbling” it was chewing.  That erosion led the RA to the point of full collapse at Kharkiv and a more controlled one at Kherson.  It was erosion of the RA through precise targeting of a critical component.
To do this at the strategic level is much more intensive.  To be effective it would mean hitting Russia across sectors of its military, political and industrial complexes.  The key component missing in your theory is speed.  To conduct corrosive warfare one needs to hit precisely fast.  Faster than your opponent can replace the losses of critical components.  Upscaling means the speed needs to outstrip Russian ability to recover at a strategic level, which means wide scale and heavy strikes on critical components across those sectors.  The UA did not “onsey-twosie” RA logistics at the operational level and the strategic level requirements to do the same are much higher,
Sure he does - seriously this is dangerously obtuse and what I mean about under prescribing.  If Russia was not deterred by NATO at all, as you claim, Russia would at a minimum 1) be hitting support bases in Poland and 2) likely have employed WMDs- they had no problem in Syria.  In fact if there was no NATO deterrence Russia may have led with chemical weapons which was in line with Soviet doctrine.
So this is what this is really about - your personal frustration with the level of western support? And somehow “small amounts of long range missiles” are going to fix this.  So this whole angle is really about making you feel better?  
Ok, well this is where I get off this bus. ATACMS are an escalation as they shift western support to directly targeting Russia inside its own borders.  But apparently you believe NATO holds no deterrence so I am not sure we will ever agree on the deterrence/escalation calculus, regardless.  
Further “small amounts” ATACMS or other weapon systems will largely only serve as demonstrations and strategic harassing fires. Their effectiveness is directly linked to western ISR for target development, validation, prosecution and post-strike assessments, which provision thereof is also an escalation - but we are also not going to agree on that because there is no escalation Russia will respond to according to your position.
Finally, as a citizen of a supporting western nation, I find this continual uninformed western/US bashing insulting and ignorant.  E.g.  we are sending them BMPs because the UA can quickly get them into the fight and keep them into the fight - only a rank amateur would think stuffing Marders  into the UA is easy and west is somehow being lazy for failing to do it.  For example, Marders has 6 dismounts while the BMP has 8 - so the UA can just redesign its squad size over a long weekend while re-aligning it’s logistics system to maintain the things, including a whole new suite of FCS and spare parts…apparently.
The west is sticking its neck way out on this one for a lot of good reasons, and not all of the altruistic; however, they are backstopping Ukraine well above and beyond the call while not dragging us all into WW3.  But people in the cheap seats still want to crap all over us because we did not supply whatever piece of kit pops into their highly uninformed heads.
Ok, I am out…can someone show me where this damned ignore button is?

Im surprised.... 128th are no second tier, turkey-stuffing type unit. It sounds like either the hand off was rushed/badly led or that maybe the 128th didn't realize what they were up against, weren't ready for the intensity and tactics (which points back to a flawed hand off,  wrong person taking point for 128). 
There were numerous examples in WW1 of newer units taking over a part of the line and the transition bring a critical weak point for the enemy to attack.  The simplest solution was two-fold: longer handoff and acclimatization of the new unit, followed by keeping the old unit in the locality to respond/reinforce.
If I remember correctly, for the British & Americans it was the higher echelons of command that were usually the points of failure, due to overconfidence and (for the Brits) classic British demeanor of playing-down of issues/events. The casual, non-dramatic way a British officer* would describe a dangerous situation ("yes, bit of a tricky situation, that trench, something to keep a half-eye on, eh?") could be later described by an American AAR in more accurate terms  ("an extremely dangerous weakness manned by inexperienced and badly lead second-rate troops opposed by highly effective and attentive Germans").
Along with the cultural verbal  tangles,  for the US it was the lack of battle experience and brash over compensating, to fend off being looked down on as the newbies.
With the Germans I think it was the quality (and later simply the quantity) of the incoming troops themselves. For the French I think it was an slowness/inflexibility in adapting to new, suddenly applied, German tactics,  which made handovers particularly effective Windows of opportunity. 
To be clear,  I'm not casting aspersions on any particular nation,  just highlighting the many and varied ways a hand over can go horribly wrong. Sure, the above were cultural issues sometimes,  but the key aspect always was that someone forgot that The Enemy Is Always Watching. 
 
*A relative (Irish) was in the Irish Guards (British Army) and noted this cultural tic. He said once you got the hang of it that it was actually a useful group coping mechanism in battle, Esp with newer guys but as a Signals NCO it drove him bonkers. He found Gunners far more to-the-point and practical, as you can imagine. Staff dweebs were the worst, the absolute WORST for it. Like bloody Jeeves & Wooster, he said. Maddening. Perhaps @Splinty can confirm? 

So you are suggesting pulling the US more directly involved in this war so we can basically ping away at strategic targets within Russia “just a little bit more”?  The risk to opportunity costs are pretty upside down on this.  As I said before Ukraine has every right to strike legitimate military targets within Russia and obviously has a level of domestic ISR to do so. However, this is harassment fires that create uncertainty and doubt, which is not small, but Ukraine is already capable of this on its own.
Supplying longer range HIMARs without ISR support will limit their employment to what Ukraine can already prosecute or risks Ukraine leaning in and taking risks we are not comfortable with.  I have no doubt if the US supplies ATACMS today there will be people on this board screaming for “more ISR support so Ukraine can widen its target set” in another month or so.
A strategic offensive is not something one “nibbles away at” in ones or twosies - you claim to want a quick end to this war (strategic end) and that Ukraine needs long range precision fires to target in-Russia targets (Means) but they are going to do it incrementally (Ways)? - this is a flawed strategy with all the risks of escalation and none of the payoff?  You have under prescribed the risks to fit your narrative but it does not fix a fundamentally flawed strategy.
Your limited Russian airfield is a classic example of amateur military planning - ok, we execute a “limited campaign” against a single Russian airfield with strategic bombers, “1-4” was the number you quoted.  Let’s unpack this one:
We give Ukraine a few dozen ATACMS and they go ahead and do this campaign on their own - no western ISR.  Ukraine now has to validate the target and do BDA all on its own.  We have definitely escalated things by providing the weapons but can keep our hands clean from direct targeting.
Ukraine goes ahead and hits the target - you will all feel better I am sure.  They hit some infrastructure, damage the airfield and take out 4 Russian strategic bombers - huzzah!
Well this will definitely create some uncertainty for Russia which is not small, they will react and likely pull assets back lengthening flight times.  This will definitely be an escalation as it is now targeting their ability to defend themselves from NATO but it might make life harder for pounding Ukrainian cities.
Ok, now what?  Russia has over 500 TU-95s:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 . So the actual damage to the fleet is minimal.  Airfields also take a lot to knock out so the actual damage to that airfield is going to be temporary.  Finally, we have done nothing to actually affect the Russian strategic bomber system.  It’s production, maintenance, fuelling, arming and C4ISR.  We have damaged an airfield and knocked a few platforms.  The Russians will pull back, take a little longer and burn a little more fuel (which we also did nothing about) and still hammer Ukrainian cities with abandon.
What we did do is escalate this war.  Likely reinforced Putin’s narrative that this is an existential war for Russia against NATO pretty significantly, and Russia will likely continue to escalate strikes against Ukrainian cities.
So in a month or so, you and others will be demanding a broader campaign to hit “all Russia’s airfields in ATACMS range!!”  There will be all sorts of upside down risk calculations because - once again - no one has offers any educated assessment of where the Russian escalation threshold actually is.  A larger counter AirPower campaign will require western ISR support and pull the US further into direct involvement in this war while steadily marching towards a plausible Russian escalation threshold we cannot fully define.
More bluntly put - we are breaking our opponents hands and arms right now.  It is slow and painful but working.  If you want a fast end to the war you are going to have to hit the body and head, hard and fast - no sidestepping or weasel-ing out of that reality.  Russia has nuclear strategic deterrence and a doctrine behind it:https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/R45861.pdf. That is a pretty grey and broad doctrine btw.  So if we start striking it’s head and body we are on a slippery slope to someone pulling out a gun in this bar fight. 
The end to this war is not about making you feel better.  It is about negotiating with a reality nobody wants but can live with. Russia is already on the ropes within Ukraine, the operational campaigns have been brilliant and are working.  If we are going to do anything more double down on that because any “quick and easy” magic new platform/weapon solutions aren’t quick or easy.
 

My comment was in jest, I refrained from using a smiley emoji so as not to cause emotional damage to one of our revered members

Well beyond the hard left turn at pro-proliferation, for which I can think of about a dozen arguments against with respect to Ukraine or any other small power nation for that matter - back to my question: “so what is the Russian redline?”  The pro-“give them everything” crowd has either undersubscribed this factor or simply sidestepped the question.  
“We should do everything from no-fly zones to providing Ukraine with ATACMS to F22s and M1 Abrams.  We should feed them targeting data on Russian targets everywhere and hope they stick to them.”  Ok, so again, people in this camp have highlighted what they are pretty sure are not Russia escalation tolerance lines but have offered no insight as to what those lines may actually be.  What would it take for Russia to be forced into a corner enough to escalate to WMDs?  If the answer is “they will never escalate” then prove it - post some studies that support this.
I have no idea what those Russian red lines are, or are not.  75k dead clearly is not, how about 150k?  A few strategic hits, how about 20 or 30, or 300?  Try and kill Putin and hit the Kremlin?  Really hit their nuclear arsenal and not a single airbase?  I don’t know and I am betting neither NATO, nor the US knows either.  This is not a schoolyard fight, it is a really dangerous war.  If we are going to get serious about hitting Russia fast and hard, we are talking about doing it to the point where the entire Russian war machine collapses.  Widening the war to hitting their entire military strategic system - not some amateur hour lobbing of a few ATACMS.  So is that going to trip the trigger?
I am glad some of you are very confident in your positions - but these levels of confidence in warfare make me very nervous.  War is all about uncertainty and we are in the middle of a high consequence big uncertainty right now.  I applaud the US and the west for playing this one so carefully and still ensuring Ukraine is coming out on top. This has been a masterclass in smart incremental warfare.

It is not in the least.
There is one very big caveat to this that everyone is glossing over- who is developing the targeting packages, and with what?
The risk of escalation is not so much weak-kneed western resolve it is trying to avoid direct acts of war between the US and Russia. Of course Ukraine can hit legitimate military targets in Russia, particularly if they are part of this “special military operation”.  And the nuclear escalation equation is also part of all this but the spin here is that the US is avoiding direct involvement in this war because then it turns the war into something else.
For the same reason the US is not conducting airstrikes, they are pretty cautious with their ISR data. So Ukraine get ATACMS or whatever - whose data are they using to hit the right targets in Russia?  If the UA fires blind they could wind up hitting a civilian neighbourhood, which is going to harm their cause - and I get the unfairness as Russia pound civilians in Ukraine but as we discussed before one warcrime does not justify retaliation warcrimes.  And there is the risk that a Google Earth long range fire hits something Russia does take seriously enough to escalate over.  
For those in the “Russia is full of crap on escalation, always” camp - ok Tex, what is the Russian red line then?  Would a NATO ground invasion of Russia set them off?  If you answer is “yes” - ok, let’s walk it back from that and in your professional opinion tell me when to stop. A direct strike on Russian political leadership?  A strike on Russias nuclear arsenal?
 If your answer is “no” - please leave for a bit because you are no longer part of a rational conversation.
Regardless, we are back to “where is the ISR coming from?”  If the US or any other western nation is developing targeting data or packages for direct strikes on another nation it is an act of war.  Imagine if Russia or China was a third party in a conflict and was providing targeting data into a western nation…ya, that. I am pretty sure the US ISR architecture is tying itself in knots to avoid being pulled into Russia right now.  If the UA can use their own ISR - and I suspect HUMINT is being employed - good on them and please don’t do something dumb. However, Ukraine is a free independent nation defending itself with its own resources.  The US developing data and packages on Russian targets, in Russia, is an escalation on our end - a pretty serious one. It definitely shift to strategic offence which is a pretty severe line to cross just because we will feel better.  Further, it may not shorten this war, it may lengthen it.
The single biggest fear in the west is that Russia will widen the conflict and directly strike out at a NATO nation.  Why? Because we would have to respond, NATO is too big to fail.  If Russia calls our bluff and we do directly respond the whole thing gets crazy fast. Now Putin has justification for broader escalation and that is a train we might not be able to get off.  Further it may split resolve in the western world - I am not sure how keen the rest of Europe is on dying for Ukraine. The evil truth is that Ukraine may be more important to Russia than it is to the West when we get into that sort of calculus…maybe.
The US president was pretty clear and I agree with him - the second this conflict widens into the western sphere, pulling NATO in, we are talking about WW3. And that will involve strategic nuclear escalation because it is all Russia really has left in the bag for a conflict of that scale.  We might get lucky and Russia blinks and someone shoots Putin in the head before it comes to it - but that is a hope, not a plan.

"Are we the good guys?"

How about just picking up the phone? They have a direct hotline. Well, these days it's a special encrypted email link.

Cool. Extra-judicial assassinations of random and irrelevant people we dont like. Long term peace /definitely/ lies down that road.

Agreed. With the recommendation that you consider that you have inadvertently stretched the concept of war to explain *everything* of consequence and causality, for *every* species on earth. The term war used this way is tantamount to “air”. “They are all *breathing*”! It must be AIR that is causing all our troubles! “No, it is birth!” Everything is secondary to being born!”
Yes, conflict is a feature of life. Yes large scale contact between populations of all species often results in competition over resources and one group prospering (but not always). But culture and evolution are far more complex than the simplistic explanation that all competition of any consequence is reduced simply to a vaguely defined label, “ war”. 
 
Honestly, when the discussion is about the analysis of doctrinal effects in war, and anything related to such, your knowledge trumps anything I might think, even before I think of it! But here, across far too many specialized fields…it’s a bridge too far. And agreed - way off topic!
I yield the floor to everyone else.

Respectfully, you are reducing everything to a vague use of “war”. The impact of disease spread by contact of population groups happens regardless of whether there is ANY or none at all conflict.  This hypothesis has become a bridge too far! 

With respect, I think you are going down one of many trails - a quite interesting one indeed, but just one of a great many. The modern term “war” has suddenly been expanded to cover all human conflict and migration since the beginning of time. But that does not distinguish from any and all forms of life on earth, including the flora (which is pretty violent, even if in very slow motion)! The idea of “war” defined thus way as a singular shaper if Homo sapiens is vague and generalized such that it can describe any competition within an environment or a migration to a new one, by any and all species. The members of all species fight over scarce resources, unless they are in a symbiotic relation, or a time of niche equilibrium with well-established non competing species. The human population groups experience is not generally different than most other species on the planet. And that is where DNA evolution takes place.
Everything being discussed is Cultural Anthropology and Archeology. And cultural “evolution” is what some specialists in the field call their various theories addressing the more general subject area of Culture Change. There is no general agreement on one theory of how cultures change, or whether there can be such a theory, and whether and how “evolution” might apply to it. The field is notoriously replete with new theories of the day, and the book you referenced and its related conference here at the University of Oregon is one of them. I am *not* dismissing the interest in it. Rather what may be too quick an uncritical seizing upon one idea, one branch on a very complex, fuzzy tree of theories in this field. Understandable, because it focuses on one’s own profession? Regardless, there is a lot of speculation here. Agreed that that chart is questionable and a data set of unknown provenance. At first glance it lacks face validity - already pointed out by another post here. But really it looks like an attempt to suggest that a putative shaky history is causal, biologically. 
I have to say the terms “fictional environment” and “artificial environment” specifically are problematic. Fictional environment as used sounds like story, or when viewed from a different culture, mythology. There isn’t any DNA evolution specific to Russia’s story about Ukraine and Russian history - any more than in say, “Manifest Destiny” in the USA history. *All* cultures create stories that prop up their core beliefs and justifications. An example:  
All those Old Testament chapters recounting the generations of kings is a “fictional environment” established after the two Hebrew Canaan kingdoms of Israel in the low lands and Judah were nearly wiped out by the Neo Assyrian Empire. Only the hill located kingdom, Judah, remained, although as a subject of that empire. Revolts led to Judah’s destruction and  the famous exile. After the fall of the successor Babylonian Empire, the remaining Judah members filtered back to their original Canaan territory, sparsely inhabited. But to establish legitimacy as the single head of a new kingdom, the leadership created a tale of familial succession stretching back to the founding of the kingdoms. This became the founding myth of the new kingdom, Israel. Stories - myths - bind people together. This can certainly help maintain a population group’s identity, and its rules about sex and reproduction

Exactly. 
The vast, vast majority of Western populace know if this war from one liner headlines. 
They read RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE and say oh noes, those mean Ivans.  Oh well.  Then they read UKRAINE ****S UP RUSSIA and they go Oh yay,  plucky Ukies!  Good on them,  I'll stick a UKR flag on my car. Here's some spare change. Yay me.  Then they read UKRAINE HITS RUSSIAN STRATEGIC NUCLEAR AIRBASE and they say Wait up, Nuclear?  Oh kayyy, ummmm.. Now,  if we add in UKRAINE HITS BELSRUSSIAN CITY (totally misrepresented) they say HOLD ON, WHO IS ATTACKING WHOM?  I'm confused!

Maddening. 

No offense mate, I live 40 kms from the border. Probably directly know more Belarussians than you do, and not only opposition ones. But of course you are entitled to your own opinion, which seems like traditionall mix of stereotypes, not adressing evidence contrary to your claims (election results, mass protests, low support for war, volunteers, pacification of society, heftly paid regime apparatus and bloody 40 k muscovite soldiers stationing in the country) + I'll of course soon hear next conspiration theory like the one with Russians supposedly "shooting down" PL presidential plane in 2010. With zero evidence to support it.
Of course you are right in a sense that large part of Belarussian population is indifferent, pre-political homo sovietici. Many are still enchanted by Luka propaganda, and he probably scores non-insignificant support just by playing protector against chaos raging around. Those stories of railway workers sabotaging Russian supplies lines seem also (largely) puffed with wishful thinking. But it s also a fact that active parts of society- quite unexpectedly even to themselves- did something to overthrow him, and almost succeeded. Lukashenka regime was saved mainly by Russian support and feeble reaction of the West/ China, which refused to heavily sanction Belarus as important transit country for their goods (again big thanks to Ms. Merkel and German business oligarchy- "the Spice must flow" like they say).
Just to compare- Maidan was also work of relatively narrow parts of society, and in 2014' Ukraine support for it was also by any means universal. So nobody force you to love Belarussians, especially considering harm done to Ukraine. However, turning the blind eye on all things put forward before is also not wise. All pro-demcratic changes must start somewhere, and Belarussian ones were not the worst, especially in comparision with Russians.