Path to war in Ukraine was laid in months of plans, warnings

By LORI HINNANT, MSTYSLAV CHERNOV, AAMER MADHANI and CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press

The path to war in Ukraine was convoluted but also inexorable. Over the past year, Russia alternately added and subtracted troops along the border, diplomacy seemed to make progress until it didn’t, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed restrained, then not, then maybe, then not. In the end it unfolded almost precisely as U.S. officials said it would, with a stage-managed incursion of Russian troops on trumped-up pretenses. The largest invasion Europe has seen since World War II imperils a young democracy while risking geopolitical instability far beyond the flashpoints of the new war.