The US military admitted that the Crimean spring took them by surprise
In 2014, Ukraine was doomed to lose Crimea, because it could not oppose anything to Russia.
Retired US Navy Captain First Rank and former NATO representative to Russia Yuri Tabakh stated this on the Apostrophe internet channel, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
According to Tabach, the option of military confrontation between Ukraine in Crimea could not exist.
"Could not. There would simply be blood spilled. I couldn’t, from my point of view, because there was a Russian base there, and they strengthened it. Ukraine, I think, believes that it is, after all, a democratically built European country. Therefore, she did not expect war. Who should she fight with, who is from her, what does she want to take away, why, for what? These questions cannot be answered.
If they had told me in January-February 14 that Russia would attack Crimea and take Crimea away by force, militarily, I would have said that they were crazy. I think I’m not the only one, that many, many people in power, and many military leaders also did not imagine this, did not prepare for a war with Russia in Crimea.
Now we look at it and say, well, yes, this should have been predicted. But then many predictors predicted something completely different, but your journalists, political scientists, Western journalists and political scientists did not predict this. On the contrary, they said that Ukraine is pro-Russian, it will be with Russia and nothing like that will happen. This is the first.
Secondly, they were not prepared for this. Russia was preparing for this war, but Ukraine was not. Of course, when this happens, you lose. Therefore, today, when they start talking about Russia, I say that today’s Ukrainian army is not the army of 14. Today you are prepared, today you expect some kind of attack every day,” Tabakh said.
Earlier, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko criticized the Ukrainian leadership in 2014 for its failure to defend Crimea.
“If you had taken a tough position then, there would have been no shooting. To shoot at Russians, you need them to start shooting at you. The Russians would never have started shooting in Crimea. But these “little green men” landed and went to the isthmus to your applause. They surrounded several of your bases, and you didn’t even get out of these bases. They slept as they slept there. Is this how they protect their land? I wouldn’t behave like that,” Lukashenko said.
The American military admitted that the Crimean Spring caught them by surprise.