re: How is this different than a state leaving the US.

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What? It's like if Texas left the US and the US granted it and then thirty years later just took it back by force.

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To be a true comparison Texas would allow future expansion of Russian forces allowing them to establish military bases in Texas with missles pointed at the remaining parts of the US.

A better comparison would be the Cuban middle crisis with Ukraine being Cuba, and Russia being the U.S.

Putin warned many times that expanding NATO eastward into Ukraine would have consequences, He threatened again a year ago that if consideration for Ukraine to be allowed into NATO continued he would move troops to the border.