When Russia invaded Ukraine a few years ago, I was very lib and mostly history-illiterate. I try to be more ML now, but I still don't know a lot about world history. I've heard people saying that, at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO promised they would not move toward Russia, but have since continued to expand eastward. I understand this is threatening to Russia, and I understand why they would want to respond, I'm just not sure why Ukraine specifically was the response? I know we give critical support to Russia in its opposition to the imperial core, so is that the reason? I also know Ukraine is brimming with Nazis in their ranks, but is that alone a reason to invade them? Is my saying Russia invaded Ukraine a misunderstanding in itself? I'm not trying to challenge you guys, I sincerely don't know and want to understand.
So is this article implying that either a) the 2022 'SMO' was planned in a very short amount of time (3 days or so?) in response to Zelensky accepting NATO arms or b) that the "invasion" was already planned for significantly longer by Russia and that Putin would have retracted his plan to launch the invasion over one decision by Zelensky between 21-24 Feb 2022? How would Zelensky look if he rejected arms while in immediate anticipation of an invasion planned by Russia? The subsequent operation really undermines the pretext that Russian soldiers were deployed to Donbass for peacekeeping (the author placed the words in quotation marks).
The author in this passage accuses Russia of war crimes and claims that it's obvious they aren't excused by Russia being provoked. When you say that you uncritically support Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine you didn't mean to include war crimes in that though, right? I just feel uneasy about discourse which seems (to me) to be too generous towards Russia's narrative given their war crimes.