That 1) is full of holes. It is 2024, only 2 years later, and Ukraine is awash with NATO gear and as mentioned the official position of the US State Department is saying they're going to be part of NATO. They were clearly on the verge of integrating with NATO if not already doing so and close to the point where Russia was out of options. If the Russian military had waited any longer there wouldn't have been anything they could do and realistically they made a massive error not invading back in 2014 when their losses would have been much smaller. To see "nowhere near joining" we can look at somewhere like Georgia. That is a country that is nowhere near joining NATO. Russia invades in 2008. They got no support and today, nearly 20 years later, they are still not part of NATO (although they are getting there). The invasion was over and done in 16 days; night and day compared to what is happening in Ukraine.

I don't have a position on 2 and 3 although they seem pretty reasonable. 4 I mostly agree with - the caveat to that is the last part. Russia's decision to invade is easily understandable and reasonable. We can see what NATO was planning on doing to them based on what is currently being done. If they didn't act now they'd lose their chance and the US would probably start setting up missile banks along the Russian border at some point. Realistically that might still happen, it looks quite bad for Russia right now.

This war has cost Russia a number of troops that, while difficult to estimate, is probably measured in 100,000s. Their opposition is entirely sustained by NATO logistics. Going in to the war Putin, on behalf of Russia, basically started the speech with "I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border" [0]. This theory that Russia was motivated by internal conditions to Ukraine and no broader strategic concerns requires them to be ignorant of the biggest military threat to them, which turned out the be on the verge of materialising, while simultaneously pretending to be motivated by it for political reasons. It is a much more reasonable view to accept that in their military action they are probably motivated by the single biggest military threat they are facing. The one they publicly identified and that is a very realistic concern given what then happened.

We have a reference here, which is the US invasion of Iraq. It was appalling, unprovoked and the US encountered no real resistance from the rest of Asia who accepted that sometimes the big players just attack the small ones. The fact that the response in Ukraine is so different is a dead giveaway that NATO was provoking the conflict. Otherwise there isn't a reason for them to be involved. We've had more than 100 wars this century [1] and the NATO involvement and escalation of this one stands out as unusual.

And on some minor points:

> For it to be a proxy war would require that NATO caused the war

I don't expect that to be correct, but it turns out that a proxy war technically requires one of the actors to be a non-state actor [2], so I can only agree that this isn't a proxy war. But the US is using Ukraine as a metaphorical club to kill Russians.

> Would you accept the US invading Venezuela because it was concerned about that country's close alliance with Russia and substantial re-armament using Russian weapons?

Something like a reoccurrence of the Cuban missile crisis? I'd expect the US to respond with extreme violence if Russia didn't back down as soon as possible.

[0] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67843

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars:_2003%E2%80%93pre...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war