> In my view the USA has been wanting to escalate this whole situation for a while. The USA has known for years that expanding NATO into Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine, would be a war declaration towards Russia [0]. Many influential people and people in powerful positions in the USA have warned of this for many, many years.

In my view this is complete rubbish and is just attempting to excuse Russias actions and tries to remove Russias agency. The only one responsible for this war and its countless warcrimes is Russia.

This also ignores the fact that NATO was not going to expand into Ukraine any time soon. We already knew it wasn't going to happen, and Ukraine even explicitly put it on the table when talking to Russia.

The real reason for the war is the natural resources in the Donbas, Luhansk and Crimea region which Russias sees as a threat to its place a gas station in the world. If the EU didn't have to deal with Russia but could still get cheap oil and gas there is no doubt they would move providers.

> Yet, through Victoria Nuland the USA staged a coup in Ukraine [1]. Installed a puppet regime that bombarded the people in Crimea, Donbass. Prohibited teaching Russian in schools, etc...

It was a revolution not a coup, the people of Ukraine weren't happy that the Russian installed puppet was deciding to move away from the EU despite promising the opposite. This Russian puppet later fled to Russia.

> The people that live in these areas are generally pro-Russia (often from Russian descent) and the Ukraine government made live hard for them. There's been referendums in Donbass in 2014 and the Ukraine government and many others didn't recognise it [2].

Why should anyone accept a referendum at gun point, which is what all Russian referendums are. If you have someone come around and give you a piece of paper whilst holding a machine gun there is one way you are going to vote.

> After years of bombardments the peoples living in this area feel safer under Russian governance than under Ukraine governance.

I'm not sore sure about this considering Russia is literally pulling people off the street to go fight on the front lines in the LPR and DPR. Put then again it cannot be working that well cause Russia mobilised last week.

> If Western governments were sensible and would really want to avoid war, they would respect the results of the referendums last week and allow Crimea, eastern Ukraine to merge with Russia. Or at the very least split from Ukraine.

If Western governments where sensible they would given Ukraine any weapons it needs to push Russia out of Ukraine. This war is showing just how much of a paper tiger the Russian army really is.

I mean you cannot just let a country literally rape and pillage its way through another and then annex a bunch of territory can you?.

Put if Russia wants to put hundreds of thousands of its own citizens through the meat grinder its up to them. I guess thats why so many people are literally fleeing Russia now.

> However Western governments, for one reason or another, are hellbent on inciting a possible World War 3. I am not sure why, but I am just glad I don't live in The Netherlands anymore - emigrated to Thailand 5 years ago.

Western governments are hell bent on supporting Ukraines democracy.

> Hopefully SEA will be mostly safe from whatever will happen in the near future. I do worry for my family in The Netherlands though.

I dont know if you really wanna live in SEA if WW3 breaks, the west clearly has superior technology given the poor showing of the Russian forces, good chance Russia just collapses instead of inciting WW3 like you suggest.