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when anyone in this discussion talks about the behavior of not-russians, you turn the convo back to the russians and insist on discussing the agency of the russians and what they didn't "have to do,"
perhaps this pattern of framing was unintentionally, but what it does is remove context of actions of any party in the conflict
no, Putin isn't the only actor who caused the war anymore than a person who is badgered and bullied and eventually fights back is the person who "decided" to start a fight
Ukraine didn't have to bomb ethnic russians for 8 years killing 15,000 of them, Ukraine didn't have to ignore the minsk agreement or the minsk II accords
Ukraine was in a civil war with a large part of "Ukrainians," wanting to be inducted into the Russian Federation, so no Putin isn't currently "extremely unpopular" among "Ukrainians" and he wasn't "extremely unpopular" in 2014 when the western-caused violent coup happened which caused the civil war to begin with
this is another example of your framing, unintentional or not
I struggle to believe you can say this with a straight face.
I struggle to believe you don't think putin is popular in the breakaway regions which are full of ethnic russian "Ukrainians"
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People keep raising Ukrainian bombings of their own "ethnic russian" regions as something that's supposed to be analogous to "bullying Putin", when there is no evidence Putin cares any about "ethnic russians".
he talks about them repeatedly, he sent them help, he's given them dozens of billions in aid and cheap gas among other things, and he launched a war ahead of a planned Ukrainian offensive on their territory
that's evidence
you can claim the above actions have ulterior motives, but you cannot claim the above isn't evidence
I can very much claim the above isn't evidence of his motivation being "ethnic Russians" because he doesn't do all that for the ethnic Russians who don't live on the territories he wants to grab.
There are lots of ethnic Russians in Russia who are far better off due to pensions, jobs, crime, state assistance, and most other objective metrics due specifically to Putin. You can claim whatever you like and yet ethnic Russians are far better off in Russia now than when Putin took power.
edit: I didn't claim Ukrainians "bullied" Putin through their treatment of ethnic Russian Ukrainians, it's simply an analogy to demonstrate why I think it's dishonest to simply assert putin "caused" the war. He did and the bullied kid "caused" the fight by not bowing down and submitting to be abused, but then again so what?
so claim putin doesn't care about ethnic russians because evidence of him caring about ethnic russians is explained through ulterior motives you have divined, but yet claiming there is "no evidence" is simply wrong
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