It appears that emotions are just not under control across the board to discuss any matter seriously. Any post of emotional vomit of how much one hates Russia and how pure and morally, politically, culturally purified Ukraine elites are it has immediate upvotes. An attempt of reasoned out opinion to balance the scale is downvoted. Im sure a thinking person clearly seas how infantile our western collective behavior is on this topic. One even observes that we so readily embrace and give up o states (our governments) a responsibility to protects us from "disinformation" which is everything not on BBC or CNN. [shame on us for standing down to this and even cheering it...]

Now to your comment (if that even is allowed to disagree in a civil way on HN). Im not sure what you suppose is so significant in "not a real country" statement of Putin. Just read the context. I heard and read the speech more than once. In that speech there is nothing sinister about those statements in my view. One can debate their historical degree of validity or whatever, but it is completely other thing to base/justify hate of a culture from an opinion of a statesman. And I have just too many Russian colleagues who harbor no such emotion toward UA and have no trouble disagreeing with their elites (Putin et al). And I also do not consider the parallel with Hitler valid. [Such hyperbolae are employed by state propaganda to reel public to the cause of a state, but such trivialities are not worth discussing [see Goering statement during Nuremberg trials). State is a natural process that can only exists in physical world -- a proof is in the very means of war -- it is physical process (economic and/or armed one). And only elites are in charge and control of this process.]

But whatever argument we may have about those statements, they are not the basis for the conflict what so ever, and the scope of the said conflict is nothing that you find it implies; ... the conflict is a proxy war of US with Russia over geopolitics (this is like the mother of non-controversial truth of the matter as Brzezinski, Freedman, Kissinger, and many other analyst have shown since 2-3 decades until literally days before the armed conflict in 2022. Just open any journal of foreign affairs or international affairs study ... and behold how many peer-reviewed literature there is on the topic of expansion of NATO toward Russia as a bad idea for having peace. [if you feel US patriotic review Rand or Hoover institute publication on the topic of how to leverage that] And even now, it seem that nobody in the west wants peace, while foaming with abstract hate to keep public supporting this insanity.

No single human being I know agrees with this (or any other war as far as I know) in the dimension of a innocent lives suffering. That is without any question and it is, I suppose, not necessary to discuss. However, at the appropriate levels of analysis on which state foreign policy, strategic planning and state interests are relevant, such matters do not enter and are superfluous. State does not have emotions, it is not a human being and has no agency -- states have interests only and interact with each other only on that basis. State is just a correlation cluster of cooperating individuals seeking comparative advantage in natural competition against other such clusters. By the laws of physics, globally correlated cluster could not survive long against energy demands of maintenance.... (but Im diverging here ...)