Your comment has many factual mistakes, but this is by far the best - you write this as if the NATO attacked Russia, and not the other way around... did you notice that Russia is not only "pushing" the war, but actually attacking another country, not the other way around? That Russians soldiers are in Ukraine, not Ukrainian soldiers in Russia?

> I do feel Russia has had a very valid argument regarding the NATO threat

This is exactly what the Russian propaganda states - they are somehow OK to attack because they feel threatened. I don't remember any occasion after WW2 when Russia was attacked on its home land... especially not by NATO.

Maybe next time they attack your country we can just let them have it, after all, they might be threatened by you and you don't want to get involved in any way, anyway...

> too many people died on both sides

Yes, let's not forget the massacres in Bucha and the other war crimes Russia has committed. What do you propose we do with that? Just close your eyes, since it was not you or your family that they killed, and you don't want to get involved anyway?

Neither do Ukrainians. But they don't have much of a choice really.

> Already too many people died on both sides.

And who started that?

> This is not my war and I don’t want to get involved in any way.

> I’m 40 years old and I want to care for my family (daughter & girlfriend).

Yeah, as do Ukrainians, but they can't because someone wants to kill them just because they didn't like the idea of no longer being Ukrainians.

> It’s a shame the Western world and Ukraine deceived Russia with the Minsk accords.

Ukrainians wanted to be working more closely with the west. Would you like to be relocated to Russia, or going to prison and your daughter going to orphanage if you didn't want to be Russian [0]?

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/01/russia-child...

Do I also have a valid reason to barge into your home, rape and slaughter you, your girlfriend and daughter, steal and ruin your furniture if I believe that you pose imaginary threat to me?

> It’s a shame the Western world and Ukraine deceived Russia with the Minsk accords, as Germany recently admitted [0]. We didn’t have to be in this situation.

You mean how Western world and Russia deceived Ukraine with Budapest memorandum? Had they kept nuclear weapons, Russia would stay put or risk having European part of Russia transformed into nuclear wasteland.

> I’m totally from the Netherlands > NATO, US poke the bear > I don’t want to fight *this* war > Think of children > US sabotaging pipeline > Germany is a lapdog > Phony Minsk accords

All in all, weak try, Ivan, here are your 15 rubles.

In case anyone is wondering this is line is very telling.

It's Russian propaganda -- anyone who uses it has been consuming Russian media.

Interestingly, the story is still unfolding on this one, going through:

* "it's obviously the Russian, stupid",

* "wait, no, it's not obviously the Russian, we don't have any proof"

* "thinking about it, it's probably not the Russian, let us investigate"

* "Russian propaganda claims it's the USA, but no-one really believe them anymore, because 'previous year'"

* "previously famous journalist claims it's the USA on his blog, but hardly anyones believe him, because 'anonymous source quoted on a blog'"

* "US intelligence claims it was Ukraine based on undisclosed sources". [1]

For some reason, "the evil western media" does not seem to have too much trouble accusing Ukraine of sabotages - but we're still playing the "whose undisclosed source do we believe ?" game.

Don't insult your intelligence (pun intended) pretending you know better than anyone.

We'll wait and see and humbly acknowledge that this one will probably remain in shadow for a while.

However, I suspect the "It's obviously the CIA, stupid" narrative will go on forever. It's just too catchy. "On ne prête qu'aux riches".

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-p...

> Germany has proven to be a lap dog of US interests by staying silent on the matter.

Yes this is the very pillar of NATO, the other is to keep Russia out and this pillar is shaking.

> I don’t want this war to continue.

Nobody wants, but it's Russia who started it. Russia started a genocidal war of conquest against another peaceful and sovereign country. If Russia stops fighting it, then the war will end. If Ukraine will stop fighting it, then Ukraine will cease to exist as an independent nation.

> And I do feel Russia has had a very valid argument regarding the NATO threat and USA has been aware of this for a long time, still they decided to poke the bear.

Why do you disregard the threat from Russia to Poland, Baltics and Finland, and other eastern flank countries? These countries joined NATO for a reason. They were not asked to join, they were not compelled to join. They joined because they are much smaller and live next to a heavily armed and unstable Russian dictatorship. It is incredible how Russian propaganda tries to paint a nuclear-armed and heavily militarized country as a victim.

> USA sabotaged the Russian-German pipeline

Conspiracy theory with no evidence.

> Germany has proven to be a lap dog of US interests

Huh?

> It’s a shame the Western world and Ukraine deceived Russia with the Minsk accords

It is a shame there are a lot apologetics of the Russian fascism. Unfortunately, there were a lot of callers for peace with the "we don't want war" slogans when Nazis were taking over Europe during the World War II. Some even greeted them with flowers, despite all the artocities, including in your country. Well.. history doesn't repeat itself but it certainly rhymes.

There's a good talk from Mike McFaul at Stanford [1] who outlines how Russia under Putin for the longest time was interested in joining NATO. Putin saw NATO as an opportunity, not a threat. NATO is a scapegoat - what Putin really seems to be afraid of is the fall of dictatorships and the rise of democracies around him, and he thinks the US is behind it. So he is anti-US, but the whole anti-NATO thing is a false narrative - Putin is anti-democracy. The talk explains it very well.

> USA sabotaged the Russian-German pipeline and all Western mass media acts like nothing has happened.

Why would the US do that? I don't see the motivation. The current narrative, that it was a faction of the Ukraine, seems the most plausible to me. Russia had no incentive to blow it up either.

> All the Western politicians that are pushing for war will not be on the frontlines themselves and most likely neither will their children.

True. But then again, right now we're in a situation where most politicians are actually rather conservative about the war. Just think about how long it took for heavy artillery and tanks to be shipped to Ukraine. Even now that the US and Germany are sending tanks, very few European nations are following suit - not even some that previously touted loudly that they were ready to send them, and that only Germany was holding them back.

Both Europe and the US are acting rather carefully, for better or worse. The West is definitely not in the business of warmongering.

> It’s a shame the Western world and Ukraine deceived Russia with the Minsk accords, as Germany recently admitted [0]. We didn’t have to be in this situation.

This is the article that your source refers to: https://www.zeit.de/2022/51/angela-merkel-russland-fluechtli...

Unfortunately it's paywalled, but I did sign up (their 1€ trial offer was cheap enough, and I'm German, so easy for me to read). I don't think the WSWS article you linked to cites fairly. While the citation is accurate, it jumps over one main fact:

At the time when the Minsk agreement was made, Russia had illegally de-facto annexed parts of Ukraine. Everyone knew it, even though Russia called it "separatists". Putin didn't have the guts to start an all-out war back then, that took a few more years, but the fact that the majority of these separatists were Russian soldiers was widely reported back then already. Given that Russia had started destabilising Ukraine and annexing parts of it, Merkel's comment of buying the Ukraine time to prepare for more aggressive action from Russia is perfectly reasonable, and in hindsight also the correct political action.

Russia wasn't deceived with the Minsk accords. Russia was already the aggressor back then. We wouldn't have this war if Russia wasn't invading its neighbour.

---

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbzf0ix2G5I