What a disgrace! After post-Soviet Russia was welcomed into the G7, making it the G8, Russia had a chance to join the world of democracies and market-driven economies. But then, after Yeltsin's retirement, Putin rose to power and soon after his KGB buddies became leaders of Russia's industry and Orthodox Church. What happened next is as expected. Private ownership by former KGB officers meant that these industries were no longer public nor open to private investors. Nor were the owners free from government influence. Their owners existed only with the consent of the leader, essentially helping Russia develop into a fascist state, where corporations support the single leader and his objectives. If these "oligarchs" would defy their leader (Putin), a ticked off Putin could lead to an "accidental" window fall that might likely kill you.

It's beyond any US veteran's comprehension that Russia could be considered the good guy. With Putin in power for the past 22 years, he's neither someone who shares the West's values of plural governance or polity, nor the morality of any modern nation. Instead Putin believes in government that obeys the dictates of a single "leader" whose institutions supporting him broach no dissent, nor any bad press. He also believes that industry has to follow his desires and the leaders of industry have to operate with the supreme leader's consent.

So, Putin's Russia has become a fascist kleptocracy -- a sham-democracy, nearly fully separated its predecessor, a semi-fascist "communist" Soviet Union. As early as 2008, Putin told then-President George W Bush that "Ukraine is not a country". Since then, Putin has asserted that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian people separate from Russia.

"These claims were designed to deny the existence and agency of the Ukrainian nation," Erik Herron, a West Virginia University political scientist and author of the book Elections and Democracy after Communism, told PolitiFact in 2022.

Yet, the history of Ukraine has involved several empires or states, some of which were entirely separate from Russia, Eugene Finkel, an associate professor with Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, told PolitiFact on the eve of the war.

Putin set the table for the 2022 invasion with a 5,000-word essay in July 2021. In it, he argued that much of modern-day Ukraine occupies historically Russian lands and that "Russia was robbed" of them. Putin's essay blamed the conflict on the West, claiming that the protest-driven ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, an ally of Russia, was engineered from the outside and that the Ukrainian government elected in 2014 was illegitimate.