yeah it sucks, and it's horrible, no one is arguing that

You are focusing on the outcome of nearly a decade of the West organizing, funding, training, arming etc a fascist government at Russia's border with an ideological predisposition toward war against Russia and whose choices were dictated by the US.

Where does the shelling of Donbas, Alley of Angels, banning Russian language, banning left-wing political parties, sharp rise in hate crimes verging on pogroms fit into your analysis?

The US is to blame for this, full stop. Those civilians being used as meat shields right now is the outcome of nearly a decade of funding and training very literal Neo-nazis by the US government and instigating conflict while planning full scale war using said investment. Maybe you think Russia jumped the gun, but my *opinion * is that Ukraine was a legitimate threat to Russia due to the culmination of factors, of which the ball had started rolling in 2014. You are choosing to ignore the attempts Russia has made to avoid this outcome. War/invasion or not, the result is a win-win for the west, and the losers were always going to be the Ukrainian civilians who neither wanted a western backed fascist government nor a Russian invasion.

Back to defending my shitposting that seems to have brought out so many detached hand-wringers: At some point, someone needs to shed blood to fight fascists. Whether or not that is the motivation of Russia/Putin, which it is not, it is happening.

Critical support for a US/NATO Neo-nazi army getting punched in the fucking nose for once, and I'm far from the only ML who arrived at this position, in fact I align nearly completely with most legitimate ML organizations who have made statements about this conflict.

I am not naive enough to believe these Neo-nazi scum will not resurface all over Europe.

I am wholly disappointed by the willingness of Westerners to support the current Ukrainian regime, and becoming irritated with leftists who hand-wring over the optics of ex. people thinking they support Putin if they so much as say "This invasion makes complete sense", moral posturing notwithstanding, the invasion is the logical outcome of the US using it's most worn out playbook for regime change and de-stabilization. Forming a detached position with enough ambiguity to avoid the criticism of your online comrades I'm sure feels great - coming up with the perfect take that pleases everyone, of which I have not heard a convincing position that takes into account all possible factors.