[foverzar]

This all had been well before February 2022, when the war had started.

One could argue that the half-civil war between Kyiv and Donetsk/Luhansk is also a part of this war (that would imply though that you see the civil war in Syria as a Syrian-American conflict, but why not)

It doesn't change the fact that there were quite a lot of opportunities to deescalate, that Russia was willing to participate in.

Reiterating, all direct and indirect participants consciously took all the necessary steps to turn all this into such a bloody mess.

It could all be nicely and democratically resolved by simply giving Donetsk and Luhansk basic autonomy, while still remaining part of Ukraine. But that was kinda politically challenging, so escalation it is.

[trasz]

DNR/LNR were set up by Russia, so that one was a proxy war between Russia and Ukraine. It turned into a direct conflict when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

[m000]

> It could all be nicely and democratically resolved by simply giving Donetsk and Luhansk basic autonomy, while still remaining part of Ukraine. But that was kinda politically challenging, so escalation it is.

This. West firmly understood that Ukraine is a deeply divided country [1]. Yet, West peddled the (clearly infeasible) idea of a unitary state. This could never end well for all of Ukrainians.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/01/24...