The Franco-German axis that controls the agenda of the EU wishes to punish Russia for breaking the modern era consensus about not invading European countries to change borders or topple governments. They are afraid of unleashed the demons of revanchism that would ruin their project: the European Union.
The Polish government uses fear-mongering about Russia to help stay in power, so this war is convienient for them.
Britain finds this war a handy distraction from personal scandels of its leadership.
The Baltic states are the only part of the EU that actually has anything to genuinely worry about from Russia. They are the only ones I’ll excuse here.
The US finds Russia to be a useful enemy, but really it doesn’t know how to do anything but oppose Russia at this point. Novel thinking is well beyond its capacity. If Ukraine is a target of Russia then the US will just accept that it’s a new site for a proxy war and act accordingly.
Japan has been diplomatically frustrated over the Kurils for far too long, this is some payback for them.
If these countries really cared though they would be out there with genuine peace proposals. I expect most of them cannot even imagine what peace would look like, much like most cannot imagine a post capitalist world. Russia is strong enough to seem a genuine threat but unimportant enough that they can safely be sanctioned (although Germany has some issues here) while also having the nuclear trump card that can be used by the West as an excuse to not actually get truly involved by sending soldiers.
Five other wars the West doesn’t care about
Here are five other conflicts that I consider about as bad or worse than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that the West or NATO doesn’t care to do anything about.
Tigray
Ethiopia has barely been sanctioned (weapons exports only I believe).
Xinjiang
China has been conducting an ethnocide of Uyghurs for years. The West has condemed it but largely does little else to punish China, certainly not sanctions of the scale against Russia.
Yemen
A war initially supported by the US, until it became clear that the Saudis couldn’t win it. It would be a trivial matter for the US to end this war, but that would mean Iran would have gained something and the US cannot abide that as they still can’t get over the hostage crisis, et al, of 40 years ago.
Eritria
How about just next door in Eritria. Quite possibly it’s the most brutal regime in the world now that North Korea has softened up slightly. It would be easy for any Western country of the scale of Italy or up to overthrough and replace with a better system of governance. The flow of refugees would drop off too.
But, no, that would “illegally interfering with the affairs of sovereign states”. No matter that the US does this all the time.
Syria
Turkey, a NATO member, is engaged in ethnic cleansing of parts of northern Syria (forced population removal) and is occupying segments of the country. No country speaks up against it, let alone actually does anything.
So given Western inaction against all these other travisties of equal or greater magnitude (and this isn’t even meantioning the lesser ones, like Libya) why does the West single out Russia as deserving of all this opposition (including the general populace who have largely “cancelled” Russia)?
I am only left with the conclusion that it is purely out of self interest or inertia of policy and has nothing to do with Ukrainians in particular, indeed I think many would be hard pressed to even tell the difference between Ukraine and Russia if their labells were removed.
This isn’t to let Russia off the hook, they are going through a Darth Vader phase at the moment, but, as I discussed in a previous post, like Darth Vader I believe they can be turned back to the light through diplomatic action.