[throwawaymedia]

What Russia is doing is the result of something else. That something else is the root cause of the war in Ukraine.

[maximinus_thrax]

I agree with you. The root cause is the complete erosion of civil society in Russia, the failure of the state to create and maintain a democracy and the failure of the West to turn Russia into a North Korea early on, when everyone figured out that the gangsters are actually running the country.

[throwawaymedia]

Why should the West do anything on the opposite side of the globe? Why does the West only care about democracy in the countries with a lot of natural resources? Oh yea, that must be a pure coincidence.

[int_19h]

Yes, that would be the Russian neo-imperial ambitions becoming mainstream. I watched it happening gradually back when I lived in the country - fiction books about war "against Nazis" in Ukraine started showing up in mid-00s, and one first became a hit in 2008.