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Ending the cold war took a lot of discipline and sacrifice. It is hawkish neocons in the United States (the same people who architected the Iraq war, etc.) who have nudged the US toward aggression and have tried (successfully) to shift public opinion in Ukraine toward nationalism and favoring an anti-Russia non-neutral perspective.
Putin has been responding to the antagonism with bold and efficient use of force to advance Russia's national interest in the face of such aggression.
Putin has many, many problems (authoritarian, etc.) but he's not an idiot and the whole problem was caused by US neoconservatives who incidentally don't care if many Ukrainians die in the process of trying to weaken Russia.
As usual, the US propaganda machine paints Putin as irrational and insane, just as it painted Saddam and OBL. If anything, by now we ought to realize that when we hear US neocons saying that about someone that it's probably completely false.
It's very, very sad that the people of Ukraine have been victimized first by US propaganda and second by the US using them as human shields to avoid needing to spend dollars and lives sending US troops to fight more openly with Russia.
The extent to which the US has been weakened by following neoconservative warmongering impulses is staggering. First trillions of dollars flushed in the Iraq war. We emerge from the Iraq war with the defense industry tremendously enriched and with 100x the lobbying power it had beforehand. And now we find ourselves pushing Russia and China (and many other countries who will join) into an anti-US alliance that was completely preventable.
