The myriad of excuses were for domestic propaganda purposes. Russia wasnt about to sacrifice this much for language rights in the donbas or Putin's belief that Ukrainian identity is bullshit but selling the idea of nascent
potential military threat of gradual military encroachment to Russian audiences isnt a winner despite how fundamentally critical it is.
For the integrity of Russian borders theyd sacrifice 100,000 in the blink of an eye. And have to ensure Mariupol wont ever host a NATO base.
If Putin simply wanted to invade only for territory he would have taken it years ago when it would have been militarily easier. He invaded because the military threat it posed was slowly growing as Ukraine formed ever closer links to NATO.
>if you pay attention to anything besides the message crafted by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Western audiences
I monitor all sides (neutral, russian, western), but the above analysis I read from a military analyst who hates Russia.
Your idea of what constitutes Russian propaganda and "useful idiot" is comically out of whack.
It's also pretty hard to get exposed to Russian propaganda accidentally despite what a bevy of Americans raised on 1950s red scare tactics seem to think.
>It's more likely that simply letting Ukraine skip ahead straight to joining NATO would have stopped the war.
Yep, but NATO doesnt actually give a fuck about any of the countries bordering Russia and isnt willing to start a hot war with Russia over any of them. The decades long drawn out application process is simply to let them gradually up the threat to Russia without having any real obligation until its certain that obligation wont have to be invoked.
This is slowly starting to dawn on Zelensky, I think. He's pretty mad at us right now for providing restrained help against the onslaught.