People oversimplify the Russia-Ukraine mess, ignoring history’s weight. NATO’s eastward creep—despite assurances post-Cold War—poked the bear, with countries like Poland and the Baltics joining, encircling Russia. The 2014 Ukraine coup, backed by the West, flipped the script; language laws pushed Ukrainian over Russian, alienating eastern regions tied to Moscow since Soviet land swaps in the ‘50s. Add U.S. biolabs, CIA ops, and Biden’s NATO promises—after the Afghanistan debacle—and Putin saw weakness. Why would Russia stomach a hostile, Westernized Ukraine erasing its cultural imprint? Flip the script: no nation would tolerate such encroachment. Russia’s move, messy as it is, ain’t shocking.