The never ending "civil war" in Sudan is just one of the countless proxy conflicts between the US and Russia
The population doesn't want to be under Russia's boot, of course. Nobody does. But you're clearly playing the naivety card when you should, and do, know better
So... is your understanding that Russia's been "forced" to invade because the US was arming Ukraine to eventually invade Russia?
I guess this is not an original argument to get into, but do we want to agree on some basic facts before we start:
1. Putin is corrupt. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_tFSWZXKN0 . Sure the people making the video are people who want to see him be taken down and a Pro-Putin take could be that these guys are liars funded by "foreign states" to make propaganda to make Putin look bad, but there's tons of other evidence of his corruption.
2. The person ousted in the "coup" (Viktor Yanukovych) was also deeply corrupt. E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/24/rebels-toured-...
If we can agree that these 2 things are true, then I think there's an argument I can make that the Ukranian people's wish to be closer to the west is genuine and is not a Western-manufactured thing. Because the alternative is for a corrupt Ukranian leader that would've moved to be even more in bed with a corrupt Russian leader and for the citizenry to be robbed of their prosperity and welfare.
The argument that Putin did it to stop NATO's growing sphere of influence is a curious reversal of roles of the bad and good guys. Of course it's hard to argue the US/EU are the super clean good guys, hey there's corruption in these 2 institutions as well... but the way I see it, to say that Putin is the better guy against US/EU/NATO requires a lot of self-deception. Or am I the one being deluded?
Yes, among other things.
> Putin is corrupt
Probably true on some level, I don't know enough about it to judge it and I don't see how it makes a difference. Have you checked what the current alternatives to Putin are?
> The person ousted in the "coup" (Viktor Yanukovych) was also deeply corrupt
Yanukovych was democratically elected, so you can remove the quotes from coup. By the way Zelenskiy is also corrupt as revealed by the pandora papers[0]. I guess it's hard to do something in Ukraine without being at least a bit corrupt?
.0: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...
Hah... how to know you're not talking to a serious person. Of course it has something to do with it. Putin's been rigging elections and jailing opponents to ensure he's "democratically" in power. In reality he probably knows he's deeply unpopular because of his corruption. But hey, it's easier for you to look away and say "Probably true [...] I don't know enough about it to judge.". How convenient of you to say "let's just ignore that bit, for the benefit of my delusion, shall we?".
Why is it important whether he's corrupt or not? I've written why in my other post. If Putin was a clean president, Ukrainians probably would not have had any issues if their (also clean) president wanted to be closer to Russia. But if the corrupt Yanukovych wanted to be closer to the corrupt Putin, why do you think that is? Maybe because he would gain protection to continue to be even more corrupt. And what citizenry should tolerate being robbed from?
As to your link, it says:
> The leaked documents suggest he had – or has – a previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote.
Huh, so he wanted to hide money that he earned before he was a politician? Hey... I don't know enough about it to judge, but that seems less terrible than using your political office for personal gain. But hey, maybe that's just me turning a blind eye, just like you're willing to turn a million blind eyes from Putin's and Yanukovych's corruption.
I think I made it clear that of course the Ukrainians prefer the US. Almost anybody would, myself included. But not because they are "the good guys". What are we, 12?
Sure the actors aren't good/bad but are acting out of their interest.
But the whole "Imagine if Russia staged a coup in Mexico and installed their guy" sounds like you're saying the whole situation got started because some actors' interest was to expand their sphere of influence and squeeze Russia. Let's say that this is the case; sure, I would then agree, the only logical move for the actor Putin was to sooner or later confront this with a war.
I'm arguing, how do you know there was a Western-engineered coup? Got any links? To me it looks more like a population that didn't want to live under the corrupt Putin/Yanukovich regimes, an actual people's movement. Maybe there aren't any bad actors, but it sounds like you're absolving Putin from any blame, with the whole Mexico-line of thinking, you're saying (I'll assume) "he was forced to defend his country because Nato was going to crush him".
Why did Putin attack? I can imagine he deluded himself[1] into thinking that Nato/"the West" wants to conquer Russia, and engineered Ukraine into falling into Nato's sphere of influence (so Western propaganda lying to the Ukranian public, who then forced Yanukovich out). But I imagine for Putin this explanation is easier to believe than the thought that people in the Baltics and even Russia itself don't like thieving bastards, because to do that he'd have to admit his corruption is something unsavory.
And you're sort of arguing the installation of weapons means Nato was going to attack Russia, but WTF, how about Putin look at himself if he's been behaving threateningly to justify a neighbor to install weapons? Who's the one who was the aggressor who annexed Crimea? (oh no, that's another can of worms, "Putin had to do that because the West was going to cut off the Black Sea access!", right?)
[1] The legend is that he was isolating so much due to Covid, he started to develop these theories.
More importantly, the population doesn't enjoy genocide and torture that comes with "being under Russia's boot". The specific goals and ways with which Russia wages this conquest makes them unequivocally "bad guys" and Americans who help Ukrainians "good guys", even if this simplicity offends your cynical tastes.
