If Ukraine is "pressing its advantage", it's to take back the territory that Russia has illegally attempted to annex.
Please stop spreading Russian propaganda.
At the onset of the current war, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey immediately to begin diplomatic talks. You do realize we intervened and told Ukraine to walk away?
This whole narrative that Putin is irrational, that Russia is just plain evil, and any contrary perspective is “Russian propaganda” reminds me of 2003 when questioning the Iraq war effort would get you labeled as a terrorists sympathizer.
This war is far more nuanced than the US government-backed narrative being pushed in the mainstream media. That itself is propaganda.
And what’s truly embarrassing is people like yourself actively try to shut down any discussion or contrarian views. If it doesn’t conform to your view of the world, it’s propaganda.
"Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.
> "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.
And Russia isn’t trying to conquer Ukraine.
Russia doesn’t want neighboring countries, particularly Ukraine to join NATO. They’ve been repeatedly vocal and warning about this for over a decade. NATO kept that door open and said last year Ukraine entering NATO was a certainty hence the war.
Certainly, it’s easier to ignore the past two decades of context, how we got to where we are now, and just draw Nazi Germany comparisons. No one in their right mind would defend Nazis, and so you can use that tactic to ignore facts and quickly shutdown the debate.
IMO you can decide not to put in the research and go with the distorted NYTimes propaganda, but the Nazi comparisons are just intellectual dishonesty and bad faith.
I've read multiple analyses, very cogent and well-sourced, that concluded that what Putin wants is not just to conquer Ukraine, but to reassemble the USSR, or the Tsarist Russian Empire before it, with him at its head. He sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a stain on Russia and on him personally, and he wants to restore his/its "dignity".
As part of this, he believes that Ukraine is Russian, and that any Ukrainian who does not see themselves as Russian is wrong, and likely either an American-sympathizing traitor, or mentally ill.
"He does't want Ukraine to join NATO" is true, of course, but in the same sense as "he doesn't want to lose his power." He wants to keep both of those things and gain much more. Making it all about NATO is 100% part of the propaganda he has been spreading.
Your so-called context is a strange kind of provincialism that makes everything a result of US actions (and thus sets a blame on them), and ignores history and recent developments in Russia and Eastern Europe in general. Neutrality was tried in 1930s, didn' work, countries got picked off one by one. It wasn't an option anymore in 1990s, EE countries weren't going to make the same mistake twice.
Eastern Europe lost any illusions towards "new Russia" when the first Chechen war started 1994. THAT was the turning point in European diplomacy that your pre-packaged "America is bad" narrative ignores because it doesn't fit the timeline. From how the war was waged, it was obvious that nothing had changed and that Russia was still the same shithole with an inferiority complex that uses genocidal wars against neighbors as a coping mechanism. In 1995, the first Chechen president Dudayev predicted that Russia's ambitions would not be limited to them alone[1], and it was clear to everyone else too. From then on, the clock was ticking: either build strong relationships with free countries (and become one) to acquire as good security guarantees as you can get, or get left out in the cold alone to be mauled by Russia.
As to comparisons with Nazi Germany, I see no reason to soften phrasing anymore, any differences have become superficial. Russia is openly a Nazi country. It has an intense personality cult around its leader, a pseudohistoric expansionist racial ideology of "Russian world" in theory and in practice as it wages a war of extermination against its neighbor, with the goal of destroying Ukrainian statehood and people, ultimately forcing the whole Europe under its influence. Lebensraum, Herrenvolk, Volksgemeinschaft, and so forth - it's all represented. What differences are there left, that they don't build freeways as much? It's a country where prime-time TV, under direct government editorial control, discusses bombing London, drowning Ukrainian children and setting their families on fire - none of it would look out of place in Völkischer Beobachter in 1942.
That shows like this[2] are deemed fit to air in Russia (and even represents the mainstream) tells everything you need to know.