Russia to conduct military drill involving 40 million people and to modernise nuclear arsenal

That's an entirely different situation. The Iraqi war is a bit of an exception, in the sense the country was ruled by a dictator that had no respect for human life. The nuclear weapons thing was complete bs, but it doesn't change the fact someone had to do something about Saddam.
Were it the same case in Ukraine/Crimea I'd be the first applauding Russian intervention. But it's not the same. It feels more like backslash over the fact the Ukrainian people overthrew the president in a civil war, because essentially the president unlike the people of the country didn't want to join the EU / build closer relationships with the rest of Europe and prefered to be closer to Russia. This is not what the Ukrainians wanted.

 

Apologies for the late replies. I can only post when I find a couple free minutes, and from my tablet.

 

I don't consider the annexation of Crimea a proper civil war. Ukraine had no choice. Not a part of the EU yet so it isn't a direct declaration of war from the part of Russian on the EU and allies. Nobody wants to risk a war if it can be avoided, so Ukraine had no military support. What could do they against Russia?
It's the reason the conflict never escalated further than 6 casualties. Ukraine isn't a middle east country where chaos rules.
Russia was directly involved despite the attempts at trying to deny it at first, like when they claimed Crimea had been taken by rebels wishing to join Russia and then there were videos showing Russian special forces soldiers as "crimean rebels". Come on.

In case I did a poor job explaining it my previous post, the civil war I'm referring to is not the annexation one, but the previous civil war when the president was deposed by the people.

The official death toll of both civil wars is of 9640 according to the United Nations.

 

To add to that, during the 25th of April revolution in Portugal there were only 4 civilian casualties and it involved the military. Portugal has 10 million population currently. Possibly more back then.
It still is considered a civil war.

 

Yeah there was no war at all and suggesting so is really misunderstanding what happened. Russia has military bases in Crimea and a very long history with it and close ties with it. Many of the people that live there are ethnically Russia if I understand correctly. The Russians just put on some masks and walked off their bases and said they owned the place and they didn't meet resistance. No one is going to resist heavily armed men, especially when a lot of them like Russia because they are effectively already Russia. It also doesn't help Ukraine that Crimea is cut off from the rest of their country so it's not like they could effectively even try to stop Russia without a pretty big logistical effort. Even if they could have pulled it off they knew it was the Russians and I doubt they would have wanted to escalate the conflict so openly with them.

 

Makes a lot of sense that a lot of the soldiers joined the Russians. Crimea is a lot more aligned with the Russian's than the rest of the country and Ukraine's economy is honestly shit. Russia's isn't great either but with all of the military installations in Crimea that must really be a boon so I can see a lot of reasons for them to want to join Russia without a fight.