Looking at the Russo-Georgian war or the invasion of Crimea in 2014, it's clear that Putin says whatever he wants and then practices aggression. His security concerns are pretenses (hello--what is Russia, anyway, militarily, etc.) so he can fuck around like he has a reason to do what he wants to do. The only answer to his willingness to fuck around is a policy of assured finding out. You don't look for the thing he "actually wants" when he sniffs around territorially. He wants territory. And the people living on that territory have valid reasons to not want invaded, or a war, or anything but normal unfucked lives.
So why is Putin like this? Bullshit, mostly. Believing in a world that was already rotten and falling apart when he was schooled to try and defend it. That doesn't strike me as a mindset dissimilar to people right here in the US, but there's no use in letting his worldview affect ours: sovereign nations like Ukraine are sovereign. They are a democracy. We, the US, supposedly, are supposed to support free nations.
I'm in. Here's why: he hasn't just fucked with Ukraine. He's been fucking with the US, the UK, Canada, Italy, France, etc. He's been using influence campaigns wherever he can to destabilize our belief in what it is to be a free nation. We are lousy with disinfo. But what we can know is if Putin has mobilized the sheer amount of troops he has at this moment, it isn't for nothing. He isn't doing it for shits and grins. he means it.
