Firstly, thank you u for taking the time to read and comment on the article. In your response the most grievous and important lacuna is the role of the Maidan Coup in 2014 in planting the seeds of the current conflict.
Indeed, the first shot in the conflict was not fired in February 2022 it was fired in February 2014 with the aforementioned violent, undemocratic and unconstitutional toppling of the Yanukovuch government. In so doing the ultra nationalist and Neo-Nazis in the vanguard of this event deprived millions of then Ukrainian citizens in the Donbass and southern Ukraine - the Russophone parts of the country - of their democratic rights.
The role of the Obama administration in supporting this coup was an abject example of US imperialism, using Ukraine as a cat's paw to foward US geostrategic ambitions in placing a cordon sanitaire around a resurgent Russia.
I mine these points in more detail in previous articles that I have written on this issue and history.
