[kornhole]

I don't know who Andrej Illarionov is or why I should trust what he says Putin wants.

To understand why this conflict was imposed upon them, look at the history. Russia was invaded by Napoleon and Hitler through Ukraine costing Russia ~23M people in the latter. James Baker and US representatives promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand one inch east of Germany back in 92. They lied and many countries were brought under NATO. There is a long documented strategy to surround Russia, cause regime change, split up the country to smaller states, and exploit its $81T in resources in the ground. There is much more, but I think I have said enough.

My view on Putin is that he failed in many respects. He seemed to hope that NATO could be trusted to do business with. He may have been delusional or may not have had the support to strike back sooner. All trust between the two powers is now gone, and we are in a dangerous place now.

[aguaviva]

I don't know who Andrej Illarionov is

I'm pretty sure you know what Wikipedia is; he's on there. Even that Russian-owned search engine that you prefer to use for some reason will answer your question for you. Except there's no need, because his intro was also in one of the article snippets above that you presumably read very carefully:

   Andrej Illarionov, the President’s chief economic adviser from 2000 to 2005,

So I'm pretty sure you could know exactly who he is, and indeed could find out pretty much everything you need to know about him if you wanted to.

Plus, isn't it strange that you said

   These are mostly statements from other people rather than Kremlin officials

When in fact all the 3 persons quoted were "Kremlin officials", including Putin himself and his right-hand man, Medvedev?

That's all I have time for. This discussion has gotten very weird indeed, so I'll have to bow out.

[kornhole]

I enjoyed exploring the weird argument: Based on some vague statements in unknown context related second hand by an advisor and reported through a NATO outlet, we sacrificed the lives of over half a million Ukrainians and over $200B of our taxes to ensure that both houses of the Russian parliament do not approve conquering another European country.

Never mind that RF already has a vast territory of land and resources with not enough people to populate and tap it. Never mind that such an invasion would invoke article four of NATO and lead to world war three and probably go thermonuclear. Never mind that if RF survived the war, they would not be able to hold onto a territory where the residents oppose the occupiers.

Other countries must see us as stupid, insane, or both.