For fifty years of the Cold War the whole world counted Ukraine as a country, they had a full seat at the United Nations ...
I understand there are many nuances to the events in Ukraine, for the country of Ukraine - Putin of course is quoted as saying to Bush years ago "it's not even a real country...", which is much like Sadam Hussein claiming his right to invade Kuwait because it's "the 19th province of Iraq". Anyone can look back at the National Geographic pieces on Ukraine from several years ago and see that an East-West divide is real, but not any more so than the tensions here in the USA - the difference is having Moscow in their mix.
I wonder where our lack of action originates ... we're sending Joe "shotgun" Biden to visit (as his son is handed a seat on the board of directors for the largest Ukrainian fuel company) and the Pentagon is taking weeks to deliver a planeload of MRE's ... bandages, maybe, after September ...
A dozen years ago a chain of socio-political events began with the Serbians throwing out Milosevic, next the "Rose Revolution" revitalizing Georgia and then the Orange revolution or Maiden movement in Ukraine, these were the darlings of American and West European liberals, intellectuals and socialists.
Yes the Maiden movement includes groups with ties to anti-Soviet militias/resistance that date back to WW2, the "fascists" that Putin and the Separatists loath, but how can Americans fail to sympathize with folks who resisted Lenin and Stalin after what they did to Ukraine ?