>Also because it was considering joining the EU. >The Russians threatened at least as early as 2008 that they would invade Ukraine if they did either.

this is not true. nato, yes, but russia made it repeatedly clear for years they had no problem with ukraine joining the eu, as a mainly economic/political entity.

it has only been this year that this position has shifted, the argument being that eu has morphed into a fully hostile military entity aswell.

btw, popular opinion in ukraine was strongly divided regarding joining the eu even before the coup and the ensuing civil war, and particularly against joining nato. also, there were no real prospects for ukraine joining the eu because the eu wouldn't really want that. to this day they still don't.

> They actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and captured a lot of territory.

russian invasion started in february 2022. 2014 was the ousting of the legitimate government, secession of crimea and donbas, ukraine declaring donbas secessionist to be terrorists and starting a bombing campaign and the civil war.

if you're referring to the "green men" in crimea: those were the ukranian (but culturally russian) garrissoned troops that immediately after the coup removed the ukranian patches from their uniforms and defected to the russian side en masse.