That's kind of the problem. He should have been trying to understand it from the Ukrainians side more than seeing the thing as US vs Russia.

It seems a bit of a historical change - in the 19th century view it would be ok for the Russians to get pissed off with the US trying to steal their Ukrainian peasants and associated property. These days you're supposed to let sovereign democracies do their own thing even if they have smaller armies.

Is that how it works? How about letting your ally wipe out a sovereign nation in the ME? Does that count as these days? Or casually kill 2+ mln civilians in Iraq.

“These days” also apply to us and our allies and it is an unfortunate part of how things run.

>> These days you're supposed to let sovereign democracies do their own thing even if they have smaller armies.

Yes, until they make the mistake of democratically electing someone you don't like, at which point you send in the secret services to instigate violent regime change.

There's an entire wikipedia article dedicated to the US doing that all over the place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

They sort of did that to my own country (Greece) where they supported a ridiculous military dictatorship (Junta), although I don't think they actively helped it to power. If you find my comments coloured by a certain antipathy towards US external policy, that may be one reason.

This is much like trying to understand the US invasion of Iraq from the neoconservative point of view, and parroting it uncredulously. This necessitates dehumanizing the invaded population.

If he watched this narrative for two decades, he’d know the dynamics. What he understood instead is the official media position of the day, in which the bad guy is the main actor. That is still impressive for a foreigner, but of no use. Even a half brained dog can see through it here if lived long enough. Sadly our population is heavily handicapped in this regard because it was never exposed to rational argument, which itself is (IMO) the root of all our evils. All our opposition always sucked at politics and literally died out. Good politicians don’t die.