> When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine decided they didn’t want to be a part of Ukraine anymore, Ukraine shelled them.

Oversimplification. Ukrainian constitution says that all referenda needs to go through a vote by all people, not only the ones concerning a region. It was unlawful under Ukrainian law. On top of that there were all the little green men coming from Russia to "help" those ethnic Russians, also there are recordings of Barkashov openly stating how the votes for the referendum in Donbass should look like [1]:

> The recording was of a phone call that the security service said took place between a pro-Russian political operative named Aleksandr Barkashov, who was identified as being in Moscow, and Dmytro Boitsov, a leader of rebels in Donetsk.

> The authenticity of the recording could not be independently verified.

> In the conversation, riddled with expletives, Mr. Boitsov suggests canceling the referendum and Mr. Barkashov insists that it must go forward, but says that it is ridiculous to consider holding a real vote.

> “Are you going to walk around and collect papers?” he asks incredulously, his words punctuated by curses. “Are you insane?”

> Mr. Barkashov adds: “Let’s say that 89 percent voted for the Donetsk Republic and that’s it.”

On this point:

> But there didnt need to be a war, and NATO didnt need to instigate it.

You keep saying NATO instigated it, again, how exactly did NATO instigate it? Ukraine wasn't posed to join NATO in 2014, Ukraine had a peace agreement with Russia since the denuclearisation, a treaty that wasn't respected even after Ukraine stating it wasn't planning on joining NATO. A Russian puppet was deposed from Ukraine's leadership, the people seem to be pretty happy with his replacement since then, and are able to vote for whomever they want.

If Ukraine wanted to join NATO, how is that instigation by NATO? I seriously don't understand this repetition of Mearsheimer's realpolitik take on it, yeah, Russia doesn't like it but Russia's neighbours have pretty clear reasons and motives to want to join a defensive alliance to avoid exactly what happened to Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine. Russia's will to have lebensraum doesn't give then any validity or justification to invade a neighbour country, you are just catering to the whims of a Russian government that's been pretty clear about its objectives towards its neighbours, why do you keep trying to justify their actions?

Illegal referenda, annexation of territories (specifically productive ones with industries and natural resources) and so on are never going to be justified by the ghost of an ever-encroaching NATO. Russia just needed to stop being a fucking asshole to its neighbours, why can't they do that? Because it's an imperialist shell of a country trying to survive by sheer brute force over its vast expanse of land, something that would never be held together if the people had any say over their future, there's always an iron fist hammering down and subjugating all of its regions.

It's absurd and shameless to actually try to defend this, even worse by simply parroting Russia propaganda. You aren't smarter because you found and chose a contrarian position to be the hill you die on... Quite the opposite.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/world/europe/ukraine.html

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/ukraine-russia...