Well that depends on your interpretation of what justifies war. If you think nothing does, than obviously nothing will. I don't think Russia is justified, but that their position is understandable. The Ukrainian military shelled Russian speaking civilians in Donbas. They also, deliberately or not, fired over the border and killed Russian citizens in Russia. They dammed a river supplying 80% of the fresh water into Crimea which had rebelled and join the Russian Federation. Ukraine was also seeking NATO membership, which would mean that anything that could have constituted an attack on Ukraine by Russian would have triggered war with all of NATO, meaning that unless Russia acted now Ukraine could have continued to kill Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity with impunity under NATO's protection. Basically with Ukraine in NATO, the US could trivially engineer a full scale war with Russia at any time.
Parts of Ukraine are heavily populated by people of Russian decent, who speak Russian, they are discriminated against by the government and by ethnic Ukrainians. Before the invasion Ukraine had made it mandatory for all public servants to speak Ukrainian for example. The US assisted right wing militia to coup the Ukrainian government in 2014 because the president was seen as pro-Russia.
There was an ongoing civil war, drawn along ethnic lines. The US always intended to escalate this conflict as a way to hurt Russia and Putin decided to strike before he had to face a NATO protected belligerent on the border. You might not agree that this is justification, but I think it puts paid to the suggestion that the war was merely territorial aggression by an inherently militaristic government against a peaceful one.
Well that depends on your interpretation of what justifies war. If you think nothing does, than obviously nothing will. I don't think Russia is justified, but that their position is understandable. The Ukrainian military shelled Russian speaking civilians in Donbas. They also, deliberately or not, fired over the border and killed Russian citizens in Russia. They dammed a river supplying 80% of the fresh water into Crimea which had rebelled and join the Russian Federation. Ukraine was also seeking NATO membership, which would mean that anything that could have constituted an attack on Ukraine by Russian would have triggered war with all of NATO, meaning that unless Russia acted now Ukraine could have continued to kill Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity with impunity under NATO's protection. Basically with Ukraine in NATO, the US could trivially engineer a full scale war with Russia at any time.
Parts of Ukraine are heavily populated by people of Russian decent, who speak Russian, they are discriminated against by the government and by ethnic Ukrainians. Before the invasion Ukraine had made it mandatory for all public servants to speak Ukrainian for example. The US assisted right wing militia to coup the Ukrainian government in 2014 because the president was seen as pro-Russia.
There was an ongoing civil war, drawn along ethnic lines. The US always intended to escalate this conflict as a way to hurt Russia and Putin decided to strike before he had to face a NATO protected belligerent on the border. You might not agree that this is justification, but I think it puts paid to the suggestion that the war was merely territorial aggression by an inherently militaristic government against a peaceful one.
Great answer, I appreciate you taking the time to explain.
There's always lots of stuff on the news megathread as well, if you're interested