Okay, the fact that Russia was provoked doesn’t mean they aren’t also at fault and it doesn’t mean the invasion was justified. All I’m saying is the West shares responsibility for using Ukraine as a proxy for its conflict with Russia.

bullshit. first of all, you can’t keep throwing around “The West” as a blame-all for everything you don’t like when specific actors do specific things and expect to have a rational discussion bout geopolitics— also, cite some evidence for these claims, please. second, you also can’t “both-sides” this and expect me to take this seriously— whomever may have had a role in Crimean unrest in 2014 sure as hell isn’t tantamount to an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, nor do I concede that there’s shared blame in that act. it’s on a whole other level of magnitude, and Putin clearly used it as a flimsy pretext for an action he’d been planning since he took power a years before.

That’s why fault is irrelevant - both sides share responsibility and the war will only end if both sides negotiate.

and third: your attempts to deflect blame away from Russia/Putin for the illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine is transparent, and, despite your repeated claims that it’s not justified, you obviously think it is or your wouldn’t be so vociferously defending it and Russia for doing so.

You refuse to accept that the West played any role at all!

I never said that, but by making such false claims, you make yourself and you false position appear sympathetic to the reader. it’s an old propaganda tactic.

As far as you’re concerned, Russians are orcs and we should fight this war to the last Ukrainian.

more playing the victim by making up things I never said. for someone who keeps saying that Russia wasn’t justified, you keep taking their side and painting them as victims despite their illegal invasion, history of brutality and long list of war crimes.

so, which is it?