For someone in "geopolitical intel", you seem woefully ignorant of the situation.

The US and its western allies spent DECADES provoking Russia. But I will refer you to onme example that is well-documented.

On 01 February 2008. US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns, sent a top secret high priority memo to Condoleeza Rice, the National Security Advisor to President Bush, advising specifically, in very clear terms, that if NATO extended an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance, Russia would perceive that invitation as a threat and might have to intervene.

The title of the memo was "Nyet means Nyet" - No means No.

What did the West do? What did the USA do?

In April 2008 - three months after Burns sent his memo - the U.S. and NATO announced an "Open Door" invitation to Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. They did EXACTLY what Burns had warned would solicit a response from Russia.

The West wanted this war. The US worked for YEARS to start it.

As NATO SecGen Jens Stoltenberg pointed out this week, the Ukraine war did not start in 2022, it started in 2014. I don't often agree with that Norwegian ghoul, but this time he is right.

When the US backed the far right ultranationalists from Western Ukraine in a coup in 2014, the first thing that the newly installed PM Yatsenyuk (Yats, as Big Mama Nuland calls him) - the VERY first thing - was to announce a "cleansing operation" in the East to rid the "subhumans" from "our land".

Azov, Tornado, Aidar - these Nazi militias were all officially incorporated into the Ukrainian military in March-April 2014 and sent to the Donbas to start slaughtering civilians.

The Nazis are STILL bombing and shelling Donetsk even today - and even though there are no military assets there.

What the US puppets in Kiev perpetrated in 2014 was a war of genocide, and Putin could not let that happen. That was the most proximate cause for the SMO. The more strategic one is the Open Door policy that NATO STILL maintains for Ukraine.