For more than a decade, Washington has treated Russia’s war against Ukraine as a series of crises: Crimea in 2014, the Donbas War, the full-scale invasion of 2022, and the grinding attrition that continues today. But this episodic framing obscures a deeper truth. Across four administrations, US policy did not merely respond to Russian aggression – it shaped the strategic environment in which Moscow advanced. Restraint, inconsistency, escalation, and now ceasefire diplomacy each sent signals