On Thursday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia had no choice but to intervene in Ukraine. "The United States and its allies have crossed all possible lines in their drive to bring Kiev into their orbit," he told a security conference in Moscow. "That could not have failed to trigger our reaction." Citing the West's military actions in Serbia, Libya, and Iraq, Shoigu argued that the "vehement critics of Russian actions in Crimea surely have no moral right to accuse us of violating international law." Russia annexed Crimea after a stealth occupation of the peninsula.
Russia contends that the U.S. is set on world domination, trying to turn Eastern Europe specifically by orchestrating the "color revolutions" that have toppled several pro-Moscow leaders in the past decade. Ukraine, where an estimated 6,000 people had died in fighting between Kiev loyalists and Russia-back militias, is "the biggest tragedy in the chain of color revolutions," Shoigu said. "How many more casualties are needed to force Ukrainians living in the east to feel 'Europeans'?" That depends in part on people like Shoigu.
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