I am not defending Putin either. Putin is and remains a brutal and oppressive dictator.

But the background of the Ukraine invasion is far more complicated than Russia just wanting to invade for land. This is about NATO promising Russia not to expand eastward and doing so anyway.

If Russia made a pact with Cuba to store nukes and ballistic missiles right next to the US, do you think we would just let that happen? The Russian invasion was entirely predicted by US policy makers far before it happened. Here’s a decent video on it.

So yes Russia broke their promise of not invading Ukraine. But NATO also broke their promise of not expanding eastward next to Russian borders. And NATO the rejected Russian membership application to join NATO.

Ukraine is being used as a battleground for NATO and Russia, which are both bad and imperialistic, to conduct a war. And I do support Ukraine in the war because it’s their land. But it’s not all black and white.