There was this Budapest Agreement, and in 2019 the comedian won the Presidency(by a landslide). Then they were talks about Ukraine entering Nato and the EU (despite being an utterly corrupt and loathsome regime - disregarding minorities, both Russian and Hungarian) - so who is to blame? Clearly, the US provoked Putin by poking the bear, which we know is not a very smart thing.
US and NATO provoked this war. They knew about the ethnic cleansing of Russians living in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of Ukraine. The last skirmish with the separatists and Russia, Ukraine signed the Minsk agreement which Ukraine did not implement. Merkel admitted that it was all a trick to re-arm Ukraine for another showdown with Russia. Two, Putin told NATO his red line which is not make Ukraine a NATO member. Ukraine has the longest common border with Russia. In addition, if Ukraine was a NATO member, NATO can put nuclear missiles right on Russia's borders. They already had Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, etc. pretty close to Russia. Yet, NATO wanted to keep expanding when Russia is already a smaller country than it once, were. The smart move for NATO which could have avoided the war is to pressure Ukraine to adhere and implement the Minsk agreement, declare Ukraine a neutral country and then, move nuclear missiles from Poland, Estonia, Lithuania to the UK, France or Germany. That would have easily de-escalated tensions with Russia. Instead, Joe Biden lit the fuse by threatening Vladimir Putin with sanctions and giving him nothing. Putin decided he will solve the problem himself by removing Zelensky. His mistake was he sent too few Russian troops to try and capture Kiev. Also, he should have bombed and destroyed with missiles all military air bases and air defenses of Ukraine.
Russian are idiots who were provoked. They stupid and corrupt. But blaming them solely is idiocy. We all know who provoked. And we all know who blew Nord stream. And we know who started or provoked dozens of other wars.
Russia is responsible, they slow walked this war to cause mass casualties. If Russia would have hit with full force in the first week, it would have been over with. Attrition is a cruel strategy, both sides are at fault.
The TimtheEnchanters of the world enabled people like Hitler, Stalin, etc. to slaughter millions. You can no longer separate fact from fiction and implicitly or explicitly support the most heinous crimes against humanity.
it's getting quite tiring to discuss that it's all started with illegal coup sponsored by the USA in 2014 or we can go to 1991 and mention illegal separation from russia anyway no matter how you slice it - current people in power in ukraine since 2014 killed russians in eastern ukraine which russia patiently asked them to stop doing for 8 years and those people keep power illegally and russia has full right to remove them what russia is responsible is what notagain said above - they are guilty because they didn't crush it fast with full force which caused huge human loss and complete devastation in ukraine