The answer was clearly no.
The feeble response of the West to Russia's initial invasion in 2014, combined with Ukraine's multiple weaknesses, set the stage for where we are today.
This is Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner’s summary of the September 5, 2014, edition, which can be read in PDF format here:
With the NATO summit under way in Wales, the Kyiv Post newsroom finishes up another edition. The talk is of peace, but the reality remains war and killing on the ground. Western leaders are talking about tougher sanctions against Russia. We have a roundup of today's events and reports from our team at the war front. We are launching new IT coverage with the arrival of fellow Andrii Degeler, and we're happy to have him. We've got an opinion from Kyiv-Mogyla Academy journalism school director Eugen Fedchenko, a good Kyiv Post friend. Business, lifestyle, and more...thanks to all subscribers, readers, and advertisers! Our website traffic has now topped 50 million page views for the year!
The challenging aspect of Russia’s seizure of Crimea was that their military and naval installations there, existing under bilateral agreements between Kyiv and Moscow, meant that Russia needed only to move units into these bases and then extend outward to control key points and installations- in the process disarming or gaining allegiance of the local Ukrainian units. There simply was no way to prevent them gaining control. Once there it now became a problem of how do you force them to leave and neither Ukraine nor NATO were up to fighting a war over it at that time.
…been writing and saying that for ten fucking years… i was so mad at Obama… still am, he’s actually responsible for all this and biden, despite, his help, which is NEVER on time when it needed most, protecting russia and their “rights” more then Ukraine, so yeah there is a fucking pattern - nothing’s really changed