I think it’s been made pretty clear between Andor and Ashoka that the Old Republic, the Empire, and the New Republic are all essentially the same bureaucracy at their cores, just with different leadership and priorities at the top.

It’s really showing the banality of evil…people continue to do their jobs and following orders of whoever the current bosses are. By and large, they can’t directly see whether their own actions are used for good or evil, the paperwork must continue to flow regardless.

That’s why there isn’t a ton of chaos when one galactic government supplants the next. Setting up an all-new galaxy-spanning bureaucracy is extremely hard, why not just do some loyalty oaths and let the existing machinery keep on chugging along.

I get that Ukraine won’t consider the possibility of ceding any territory, nor should they. They probably don’t like their allies even mentioning it.

But, there’s the separate issue of not being able to join NATO with ongoing territorial disputes. Without much context to go on, I would almost interpret this as something more along the lines of “Ukraine could join NATO tomorrow if the dispute went away (by whatever method)”.

I generally find watching in release order tends to work better than chronological order at least the first time thru. The episodes are written assuming you aware of future events depicted in previous shows, if you aren’t they tend to lose a lot of their impact.

Congrats for getting thru TAS, I have tried and I just can’t.