Actually, this entire tragedy is absolutely contextualized by the USA's behavior. The USA has demonstrated, over and over and over that it will launch wars of aggressions against its enemies and it will do so with both its own army and with NATO.

In that context, when the USA spends 30 years saying one thing to Russia and doing another, when it spends decades building forward military bases all over the world to encircle China and Russia, when it moves nuclear-armed submarines and nuclear-armed b52s into theaters on the other side of the world, when it destroys entire countries and rebuilds them as unsinkable aircraft carriers, when it runs military drills that are literally indistinguishable from preparing and launching invasion forces, when it threatens everyone's national security by building capabilities to undermine the international MAD framework, when it regular uses rhetoric saying nuclear strikes are not off the table...

In this context, when the USA is literally taking actions that are known, publicly, internationally, and for decades, to undermine the security of Russia, specifically the creation of forward bases in Ukraine along the border that Russia and the world have all shown for centuries is indefensible, a border a long which Russia has been invaded 3 times by Western Europe, the most recent being the Third Reich, where each invasion killed millions of Russians,

Russia's choice to invade it's neighbor actually makes way more sense when you consider this context. In fact, it is the decontextualization that demand and insist on that makes this so difficult to talk about. You, and liberals like you, literally say to ignore the context and just take this incident in isolation and judge it morally, and then only admit limited context in if we isolate that context and judge that context separately and morally, so that you can say "two wrongs don't make a right". This is bullshit. The case for Russia's invasion has everything to do with the context of the behavior of the US and NATO, and in fact the context of Western Europe, and that context reveals for us a process that has been ongoing for over a century.

You don't get to say, "yeah yeah, the USA does bad things but that doesn't give Russia the right...." When literally the exact reason, stated multiple times by Russia, Russian generals, and the Russian president, AND the assessed reason by NATO generals, US generals, US presidents, European and American diplomats, and independent analysts, is the physical, military, strategic threat posed to the world's 3rd biggest military power by the world's 1st biggest military power.

At some point, you will have to acknowledge that the USA and Western European allies have been militarily threatening Russia since Napoleon marched across Europe to invade Russia via Ukraine, and that this did not stop when Russia became the founder of the USSR and it did not stop when the USSR was dismantled and Russia stood alone again. It did not stop under Bush 1, he continued it. It did not stop when Clinton took office, he continued it. It did not stop when Bush took office, he continued it. It did not stop under Obama, he continued it. It did not stop under Trump, he continued it. It did not stop under Biden, he continued it. The military threat to Russia has been there continuously for over 100 years. Russia has been responding to that threat via military interventions into Ukraine starting ont 2014.

When nations like Russia ignore international agreements, it is in the context of the USA ignoring international agreements. You cannot divorce that context and you cannot pretend they are separate. The USA ignoring international agreements and devastating entire nations is exactly the context in which Russia must maintain its national security. And, like most countries, Russia has watched the foremost military power, the current torch holder of the European empire, the same Empire that has invaded Russia multiple times, has watched that empire violate international agreements and kill millions while simultaneously undermining Russian security. At some point, a response was going to happen, and in fact, everyone in the Western establishment knew it would happen when they made moves to bring NATO into Ukraine because everyone in the establishment KNEW it was strategically required for Russia to do so in order to remain safe. EVERYONE KNEW THIS, it was openly discussed. And the USA, under Clinton and every president since, followed Clinton's position that publicly they would tell Russia Ukraine would remain neutral but privately they would spend decades trying to get Ukraine to join the West and be anti-Russia.

Well guess what. When you know exactly what will undermine someone's security and then you spend 30 years making it happen, you're going to get the response you expect.

Open you eyes to the fact that the invasion of Ukraine is exactly what the USA expected to happen (though they didn't know when Russia would choose to react) and they took all the necessary actions to make it happen. The blood of Ukrainians is on the USA's hands.

There is no chance of the USA attacking Russian territory? Really? The USA has trainers, weapons, supply chains, recon, targeting intelligence, all confirmed on the ground on the ground in Ukraine and likely multiple unconfirmed capabilities on the ground as well. There is ABSOLUTELY a large chance of the USA attacking Russian territory.

ATACMS are USA weapons, that require USA training and often USA/NATO operators to function, USA personnel for maintenance and repair, etc. Each incremental escalation brings us closer to USA actors pulling a trigger to hit a target in Russian sovereign territory. The USA is salami slicing right now, and Russia is 100% correct to call it out, take preventative action, and prepare for escalation.

Russia was absolutely fine when pre-maidan Ukrainian “government” wanted more integration with Russia.

You mean the democratically elected government, which was replaced by a US-backed coup “government”[1]?