Me to. I protested 2 times against the war in Irak. I was still in high school then and almost everyone was protesting.

Oh, it's good to know that. Maybe Russia could get away with the invasion without sanctions just letting his people protest against the war. No matter if the outcome of the war is the same, or if Putin is elected again (as happened with George W. Bush in the US).

Putin tried to run the GWB playbook with his invasion but he got impatient. He didn't have a 9/11 handed to him like GWB did. Putin's excuse is too flimsy about a Nazi genocide against Russians. There wouldn't be any sanctions whatsoever against Putin if he had planes flying into a building in Moscow.

Putin is playing the kosovo card.

An area with a minority, self declared independence, minority and majority fighting every now and then, and then the "outside player" deciding to attack the whole country to "protect the minority".

For us in the balkans, america has always been a bigger threat to peace (and still is), especially after having plane fly above our roofs to bomb a country 200miles away, and not that long ago, we were still a same country.

His mistake is to mix up these plays. If he had stuck to that balkans play it would all be a lot harder to argue with from a western perspective. We just don’t know enough t about Eastern European politics/beefs. But he’s also talked about Russian security and nato expansion and denazification which is so stupid as to make a mockery of any sensible rationale.