If Russia comes out of this conflict with any gains at all that could be construed as "worth it" for their side it will be an open invitation to keep invasions on the table as a method to apply again in the near future.
Russia is literally the biggest country in the world with massive natural resources and very low population density. The idea that Russia will sacrifice its relatively small population for the sake of additional territorial gains is preposterous.
They're fighting against NATO expansion to Russia's border which they have been warning against for over a decade now. Even Stoltenberg admits this now:
Nah, the main reason is that their political systems have been captured by US, while propaganda groups like the NED have poured billions into trying to shape public opinion. Yet, despite all that we're now starting to see a huge backlash against all that from the public. The massive farmer protests are just the start of that.
Oh wow, it's the tankie version of US exceptionalism where the US controls everything and is all powerful.
The US had like zero influence in the baltics when they joined, same for Georgia when they wanted to join.
Not sure how farmer protests are involved but I hope you know that the vast majority of farmers in those protests are just people who own the farm. They don't actually work those farms and the protests so far have been against climate regulations that cut into their profit margin.
Ukraine being a neo-nazi regime doing ethnic cleansing in Donbas and planning to host NATO weapons that can strike within Russia are precisely in line with the problem of NATO expansion. Incredible that you're unable to understand how a single overarching problem can have multiple aspects to it. Hope that clarified things for you.
It's pretty hilarious how nearly everything you listed as if they're contradictory points actually come together rather comprehensively to support the thesis that Russia is having to fight a belligerent NATO. And the one item that doesn't fit wasn't ever claimed by Russia to be a reason for the conflict.
I seem to have lost track of why he’s invading.
I don't know what anyone can do for you to cure your confusion when you can't even connect the dots between the very things you are linking.
The same reason US would be against Russia turning Mexico into a battering ram against US. Meanwhile, the idea that Russia wants to take back former Soviet states is so utterly laughable. It already took Russia two years just to take on the NATO proxy in Ukraine. It's pretty clear that it would be a far bigger effort to actually take on NATO directly. Anybody with a functioning brain can see that the whole idea is absurd. Yet, here you are...
NATO has literally been expanding and invading countries for decades. Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria are just few examples. In fact, US currently occupies a larger portion of Syria than Russia is of Ukraine. Claiming that NATO is a defensive alliance is the height of intellectual dishonesty.
And let's just look at a few facts about Crimea from a US government study. First thing to note is that it was never part of Ukraine proper. US government referred to it as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Second thing to note is that majority of the people in Crimea do not consider themselves Ukrainian, and the biggest demographic considers themselves Russian:
Why would you lie like that. Not only were these NATO adventures, what Russia is doing in Ukraine is directly modelled on what NATO did to Yugoslavia where NATO recognized separatist regions and had them invite NATO to help. That's what Russia did with LPR and DPR. Just following the rules based order there.
NATO is a purely defensive alliance, not a battering ram.
You can definitely see how this isn't true, right? It'd be incredibly problematic to be opposed by NATO and to have NATO creep up to your borders. Superpowers flipped their shit over stuff like this in the cold war all the time. It's not any different today.
Sure, and in fact WWI was such a mess because of all the alliances.
But we don't have that, we have one big alliance (NATO) where the members agree to fight if any of the members is attacked. That's it. NATO forces don't go conquering. If you don't want NATO opposing you, just... don't attack a NATO country? That doesn't seem hard to do. I've done a lot of things in my life, but "sparking an international incident" has never even been on the list of possibilities.
If you're part of the global south, there's a decent chance NATO opposes you or someone you're closely affiliated with. Is your suggestion to those countries for them to just not be part of the global south?