You seem to deny there was deception. Okay. There is coherence in justifying deceptive behaviour in order to defend it.
Girkin aka Strelkov has been in jail for over three years for “extremism”, a phony charge (he was criticizing Putin a lot for bad leadership, and continues to do so from jail). Your stating that “the Russians […] are pretty openly celebrating” him seems inadequate; while he does have supporters, they do not “celebrate” because he didn't succeed as he was left to his own devices and did not receive the Kremlin and (para)military support he was hoping for, so had to abandon Slavyansk to Kiev troops.
The initial attack was the Feb 2014 US-led Maidan massacre and coup d'état. Turchinov started the so-called Anti-Terror Operation on April 7th. Strelkov arrived at Slavyansk on April 12th.
I am not aware of any “hostile actions leading up to the war” by Gazprom.
I don't think Yanukovich “betrayed” his voters more than is typical for any so-called democracy. Also, the majority of them were in the Eastern and South-Eastern parts historically close to Russia.
Nuland/Pyatt were discussing whom to appoint to lead the country, proving the USA was behind the coup d'état. The “fuck the EU” bit is of minor importance and just shows US attitude to EU or EU member states' interests, which is perfectly known anyway.
Paet himself had no doubts about the factfulness of what he was relating to Ashton (because he trusted the politically like-minded MD Olga Bogomolets† he'd spoken to, see 49764198=dead), and he was worried (“really disturbing”) that he was on board with something that was against his very own convictions, that is perfectly clear from the tone of his voice. And there is plenty of corroborating evidence, which the CIA/MI6-backed “new coalition” (the perps) chose to ignore, such as videos of people being hit allowing to reconstruct the snipers' position. Avakov etc even had the trees with the bullets in them cut down to destroy the forensic evidence that proved where the shots had been fired from.
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olha_Bohomolets – She encouraged her students to take part in the Maidan protests, received honors and positions, ran for president (but no mention of what she revealed to Paet).
I don't know what grammar errors you're referring to, but some of the snipers were interviewed in person, there's a documentary (watched it a couple years ago so don't remember any “grammar errors”):
Esclusivo Guerra in Ucraina, le verità nascoste • https://youtu.be/YI_eaMtsOz4
The Russian propaganda you're referring to is for internal consumption, of course they are in cope mode and try to instill confidence in their own population because their situation is very difficult and their leadership showed amazing incompetence in assessing the situation prior to the Feb 2022 invasion, and sent in their troops with guidelines for a “special military operation” (which they reckoned it would be, a matter of days) and not for the deadly war it turned out to be.
Russian incompetence of stupidly marching into the trap, however, does not vindicate the other side, led by the US and the UK, who laid out the trap in the first place, in an elaborate strategic threat and deception involving, among other things, a “con game” to encourage the Kremlin into taking an action it wouldn't have dared to take. The US and their vassals who also invested into this operation sought precisely this kind of war with Ukrainians/Russians on both sides paying with their blood in order for the profit to flow to the US (in order to MAGA) by draining Europe (Germany being the main loser, of course).
Being clever certainly helps in being a war-profiteering bloodsucker, but it doesn't make it any better.
It is my impression that you are dismissing clear evidence, thus showing little interest in an honest debate, rather displaying your allegiance to the Western narrative (a kind of “virtue signaling”), which I think you adhere to because that's psychosocially comfortable.