> This is Russian POV. It's not the truth. Russia poisoned Ukrainian presidential candidate in 2003. It blackmailed Yanukovych in 2013. It doesn't care about formalities, it cares about owning Ukraine.

How can you be so sure? It's true that Russia was trying to influence Ukrainian politics for a long time - and Ukrainian politics have always been hugely determined by what they can do without pissing off Russia too much - as they always feared an invasion could happen if they did. They lost that fear, slowly, over the 20 years or so after independence... It was literally a bet by the pro-EU politicians to try to join NATO before Russia felt like it was necessary to intervene... We know that because you can easily read about the debates pre-2014 in Ukrainian politics. It was obvious to most observers that the Maidan Revolution was extremely dangerous for Ukraine, as it was clearly going to piss off Russia (an elected leader replaced by revolution, with the open support of the West - and no, this is not Russian propaganda, just read about the USA's pronouncements at the time, here for example: https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia...).

You may say Russia has zero right to be pissed off, to be trying to influence a neighbouring, independent country, and I would agree in principle. But the fact that most people in the West (not all, a lot of geopolitics analysts keep repeating this) are unable to even comprehend why the Russians think it's absolutely fundamental for them that Ukraine does not align completely with NATO and the EU is very arrogant. Just think how the US might react if Mexico decided to align with Russia, and join some sort of Russian military alliance. OR maybe more realistically, with China. Have you heard of the Monroe Doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine

That's basically the USA saying that they absolutely have the right to interfere on the whole Western Hemisphere, which they have done to great effect the whole 20th and 21st centuries, many times favouring the dictators, not the democratic leaders (if you don't know about this, I don't blame you, it's not well known by American people, though this is accepted fact by most scholars, check this article for an extensive list of American interventionism on Chile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_...). I don't bring this up to make a "what about" argument against the West, but to show that it's at least hypocritical of the Western countries to claim that Russia must not interfere in any way on its closest neighbour.

> it cares about owning Ukraine

Hm, let's not go down to such kind of simplistic argument. Let me respond the way you did to me: that's not the truth.

> is Russia bloodthirsty enough to start nuclear war over Ukraine, or is it "just another country like us".

It's absolutely just a country like us, the fact that you need to ask a question like this shows that you're not even arguing in good faith. Just like they would defend whatever they consider their borders (and they do consider, now, the Donbas to be part of Russia itself, as you should know) with any means necessary, so would any of our countries in the West, wouldn't we?