I've been in the same boat. Putin's comments about "denazification seemed so absurd that I did a little digging. I found neonazis had a big role in the 2014 revolution, which started to look more like a coup. The more I dug, the stranger things got. Like Israel arming Ukrainian neonazis. WTF!?

This MR Online article does a good job summing up some of the historical context. It's a socialist rag, but the facts fit with many other sources.

The gist is that, yeah, Putin is an evil autocrat invading a soverign country, but the West has really pushed Russia to the brink, mostly to make Eastern Europe exploitable by Western capital. And NATO has expanded to the point where there are nukes on Russias border. If Russia put nukes on the Mexican border we would freak the fuck out.

Heres the article, keep looking and you'll find more. Look up the Azov Brigade and the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine too for neonazi stuff.

https://mronline.org/2022/02/24/what-you-should-really-know-...