Senate witness says Ukraine War brewing for decades, citing soviet dissolution

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Fiona Hill says continuing prepared remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing about national security priorities that the tepid Western political response to Russia's violation of Ukraine's territory meant more time contemplating the perils of provoking Russia's mercurial President Vladimir Putin than the merits of bolstering Europe's resilience to Putin's coercive power, that in the case of the USSR, the United States and every other country recognized Russia as the sole successor state, that Moscow inherited the Soviet Union's UN Security Council seat, and its other privileges and obligations, as well as it seemed the Soviet Union's Cold War sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and that Ukraine, along with all the other former Soviet republics fell into a gray zone where Russia's interests seem to trump their own and they were deemed Russia's near abroad.