Yeah but my point was that the declared invasion is happening due to the rebels that took over Donetsk and Lugansk asking for help from Putin to defend themselves from the ukrainian govt
That is a very naive take. It's abundantly clear that Kremlin orchestrated the rebel areas to "ask for help" so they have a pretext for the invasion. I mean that was so transparent that I honestly thought it was only meant for Russian local audiences and absolutely nobody would buy that in the West.