I dont think Russia was threatened by Ukraine, but NATO and more specifically the US.
All of these analogies break down because there is no real world equivalent to a purely defense action like locking your doors.
The idea that NATO and the US especially only engage in defensive military actions is what requires an insane level of reality denial.
At any rate, Im not even trying to claim Russia has a moral high ground, just that the situation was completely predictable. At best, it was like putting your hand in a cage with the rabid dog. You can make a moral point that the dog shouldn't bite, but it is still idiotic to ignore the barking, snapping, and foaming at the mouth.
Now NATO and the US forced russia to invade a sovereign country and go to war with them, killing hundreds of thousands of people?
Also now somehow russia is not full of human people but has the intelligence of a rabid animal with a disease affecting its brain and somehow their borders were crossed with aggression?
I'm guessing there is no explanation or evidence coming for any of these claims because if you had it, you would have put it in your comment.
The analogy with the dog is that you know exactly what will happen, not the biology.
What claim do you want evidence for? That Russia was willing to invade Ukraine and kill hundreds of thousands? I think the evidence speaks for itself. They were willing to do it.
This is how I thought your reply would go unfortunately. I ask for evidence and you act like you don't even understand the concept, conveniently avoiding every absurd claim you just made.
> The idea that NATO and the US especially only engage in defensive military actions is what requires an insane level of reality denial.
Oh? I'd ask for evidence but I think you're just misunderstanding what NATO is. Just because the US is part of NATO does not mean that anything it does is automatically an action of NATO.
Believe what you want. The US global strategy and practice uses NATO bases to transfer and supply its wars, house it's nukes, and intercept retaliation.
> I dont think Russia was threatened by Ukraine, but NATO and more specifically the US.
Russia was threatened by EU actually. The initial 2013 crisis, Crimea / Donbas invasions happened as a consequence of EU association agreement which was pulling Ukraine away from Russia.
Russia isn't threatened in the sense that NATO will invade Russia proper - the nukes pretty much guarantee that can't happen. NATO / EU are "invading" what Putin considers to be Russia's sphere of influence. In case of Ukraine, Putin plans/planned to unite Russia, Ukraine and Belarus into one country - the creeping integration of Belarus serves as a template.
This is like someone saying they will start locking their doors, so someone else says they were forced to rob and murder them.
It's absurd from any perspective except for warped "don't believe your own eyes, ears and thoughts" Orwellian propaganda.