Russia has a shit garbage economy and a shit garbage leadership. It's "war" has been done with threatening to freeze
Q
@Qat every few years, fucking around with asymmetric items like hacking and disinformation, and bullying old soviet countries to make sure they continue in the Russian sphere for trade and other geopolitical deals. Most would prefer that back and forth than a war with a large nuclear power. Russia attempted pipeline aspirations that were seen as a poison pill for NATO as you essentially couldn't sanction it without sanctioning allies.
In my opinion. the "west" has beat Russia a little too well on the things that would let Russia fight without a war. NATO expansion is a threat to Russia's own expansionist aims as a land power but that isn't really a threat to Russia sovereign status as they claim. But really the main area of threat from NATO is our missile shield that risks removing Russia's assured mutual destruction, could be offensive pretty quick, and by funneling too many defensive items that could become offensive to the front line of NATO countries even when we aren't stationing actual troops there. The old agreement of not putting bases on their border becomes a bit moot as technology advances to remove the need for bases from remote missile silos, etc. Piece by piece we've removed Russia's ability to "fight" either economically or in slow and steady escalation. They are left with few tools other than overreacting for lack of a better term.
So Russia's full of shit about Crimea's reasons, full of shit about genocide, full of shit about their protecting Ukrainians, full of shit about overexaggerating Ukraine nazis, full of shit about just all the shit they are slinging at the wall.
Russia fucking around in Ukraine is not a whole unlike us fucking around in Venezuela as for economic and geopolitical aspirations. Neither is particularly moral or unexpected. And our fucking around in Venezuela is equally a result of our shitty ability to simply make deals without the barrel of a gun. The US and Ukraine have created a circumventing of Russia's main economic tools for competing. There is of course a long sorted history of ethnic issues and empire issues on top of that. But beyond that we haven't given Russia an out, as backwards as they might seem, to compete and fight with something else. If Russia ties up border issues in Ukraine indefinitely they expect that at minimum it will stop collective defensive agreements like NATO from going forward. And they are right. More so Russia might be able to parlay the intervention into a nation building exercise but that seems unlikely given the war outcome to date. And finally such intervention puts their threats back to having teeth for the next country that NATO might want to incorporate making escalation on the table where everyone thought they were bluffing.
I'd still be happy to watch every invading Russia gets stomped and Putin lose his head. But Russia got beat until it had only bad options on the table.
The out here is probably a combination of letting Crimea/the east go to Russia, letting the remainder of Ukraine tilt farther west, making security pacts that are some combination of collective defense and also security Guarantees for Russia. Russia won't get the neutral Ukraine that it wants but might get half way there. Unfortunately Putin being a caricature of his own terrible self in the Western eyes will mean we aren't willing to do anything about the ABM treaty that has international ramifications beyond Russia. We should use this conflict as an opportunity to undo some of our predecessors globally unpopular moves like that.