All countries have attacked civilians, did you remember WWII USA in Europe mass bombing even on ally countries? Iraqi ones? French ones in Libya and Siria? NATO Belgrade siege? But their purpose is evident: WWII mass bombing were used to force rich European countries to reconstruct under the Marshall plan agreements a thing would not happen if those countries were not so badly treated, modern bombing in Iraq &c was done for similar reasons, less ample now, but equally in principles: making room for western private companies big earnings. Russia do not have such targets, they are meaningless for them, they do not have the western military-industrial complex, most of their activities are still public in military and health domains, private activities suffer more from sanctions and war than the outcome [1], they advance slowly and methodically clearly to minimize damages in area they want operational under their control.
[1] to a point I suspect some western sanctions are negotiated with Putin gov. to hit some oligarchs he dislike...
Major cities like Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol are shelled with dumb, indiscriminate weapons - Soviet free fall bombs from the 60’s, MLRS with unguided rockets. This stuff is cheap and plenty.
There residential areas where hundreds of thousands lived, now completely destroyed. There are videos, photos, everything. Yet you succumb to nice Russians narrative.
WWII bombing was mass bombing, with no precision target, '60s missiles are far more precise and absolutely not that cheap nor abundant and there is no military reason to mass using them even if you have a significant stockpile to bomb a residential area if this area is not filled by enemy forces. A practice mercenaries always use in war, regardless of their nationality, because that's the classic asymmetric war.
If I succumb to Russian narrative (curious, since I've cited western governmental sources to sustain my claims not TASS or Ria Novosti) you equally succumb to Bernaysian western propaganda. Being from EU BTW my own interest in on the Russian side, our major supplier, fellow European till the Urals (so Moscow included), not on the USA/UK side since those two equally do their best to pick our tech&talentsm put us one against each other (a thing we do remarkably well, shame on us for that) and do countless more or less discrete criminal and not criminal actions against us. The USA after WWII have transformed my home country (Italy) into the Mafiastan just to stop CLN Alta Italia (the major Resistence body of the country) to really becoming a democratic government, the UK help very well fueling corruption (a significant local weakness) by all means and imposing a redesign of public school to form a new kind of citizens unable to reason and act as Citizens. That after the UK itself have funded mussolini to became a dictator, that after Wall Street have founded hitler till the first year of WWII at least. Saying USA an UK obviously I'm talking about their ruling class, not their citizens that equally pay the price of their ruler business against their own interests.
Just consider a thing: EU countries can only blame themselves for their status from world superpower to a disaster, BUT Russians never invade US, while we try invading Russia few times, USA and UK and the world their ruling class represent have do so, few times. Even from history we are on opposite sides. And that's history not russian propaganda.
This is disingenuous. Russia has a long history of bombing civilians as a psychological weapon. Both Grozny and Aleppo are well documented. Your arguments “the Russians are not stupid, so if they seem to be doing stupid, then it’s propaganda” rests on very faulty premises. They are not stupid, and are deliberately targeting civilian populations. We know their doctrine and we have seen their playbook. You are only carrying water here and your rhetorics are obvious.
> With similar simple reasoning following the classic Latin cui prodest we can easy conclude that this war is needed by USA and UK élites against the EU, Ukraine and Russian interest.
This is an interesting conspiracy theory.
> On the other side Russia need safety at their western borders, for them nazis are ok-ish if on their side, not ok if on NATO side, so they haven't really choice but go to war.
Come off it. NATO is an existential threat to Russia only if Russia’s existence depends on being able to invade its neighbours. The fact that its former satellites ran to the West at the moment they got the chance is telling. If they wanted stability, they’d have increased cooperation instead of rattling their metaphorical sabre for 20 years. NATO was not more menacing 2 months ago than it was 20 years ago, quite the contrary. It was desegregating before being reinvigorated by this stupid, pointless agression. Finland and Sweden applying was unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago. If stability was the point, a hot war was the absolute last thing to do.
Also, is there any evidence, even circumstantial, that Ukraine has a significantly larger nazi relative population compared to any surrounding country? Its government is just as incompetent and corrupt as you’d expect given the context. Where are their nazi policies?
You seem to be making a lot of effort to sound reasonable, but ultimately