Russia wanted control of Ukraine, and every place they lost when the USSR collapsed.

So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to...

NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead.

uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost.

I mean fine, I think that is what the people who planned this brinkmanship thought too. All is fair in love and war and so on. With "people" I mean Obama and Biden btw.

The problem is this was dangerous warmongering and we KNEW how Russia would most likely react. Even during the Maidan "protests" when senior US politicians visited Ukraine as support there were articles in western newspapers warning of this.

Because the exact same thing happened when the CIA interfered in Georgia with the "Rose Revolution" and talk of EU and NATO led to Russia invading. And yes there is hard evidence for CIA/NED interference in Georgia as well.

So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.

So the moral question becomes - is it justified to start a war in order to bleed the dangerous ~~Orc~~Russian empire?

If your answer is yes, then that puts the onus of providing hard evidence that the alternative would have been likely to occur and to be worse.

And even then it doesn't justify fucking shitting on everybody who points out the historical facts and that this war was partially provoked? Why continue demanding unwavering support for the US, NATO and EU imperialism? Why deny reality? Why pretend that the western mainstream media is somehow reporting the objective truth and everything else is "Russian propaganda"?

The answer is that ONLY if you deny all historical evidence can you build consensus to endlessly continue the proxy war and make it sound like diplomacy is impossible.

Anyway, yeah Putin talks a lot of shit, he's known to do that. He's a sociopath who rules Russia by means of propaganda. But he hasn't started any wars except in response to US imperialist aggression (or maybe one, don't know about the Chechen war). So I don't think he would actually invade neighbors unprovoked. Ukraine could have stayed neutral and be... well not perfectly fine. But better than it is now.

What Russia did do is pretty much the same as what the US does - interfere through propaganda and other means in the democracy of other countries. This would justify harsh sanctions in my opinion, but does not justify war because moderating social media like facebook and twitter to filter propaganda would not even be that expensive. But that is not something you'd hear from a neoliberal.

It all boils down to this: This war was provoked, the evidence for interference and regime change is indisputable (they admitted it), there are actual nazi sympathizers holding power in Ukraine's military today. Would Ukraine be better off without a CIA plot and still neutral under Yanukovych's successor?

BTW this does not excuse Russia's invasion or make me pro Russia. And neither is this argument invalidated by any war crimes committed since the coup, or excuse these war crimes.

On a personal note I have to say that well at least the EU would be whole fucking lot better off without this imperialist bullshit. Without this insane wealth transfer to the military industrial complex. Without rearmament. Without the left completely turning off their brain and drinking the fucking NATO cool aid.

You give favor to one empire in this situation (and you acknowledge that is what they are, and what they are doing)

I did not, do not misrepresent what I wrote! I called them a burgeoning empire, an itty bitty little cute empireling! (/s in case you missed it again)

But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far.