Readers of this site will know that I have long argued, almost from the beginning of NATO’s proxy war against Russia over Ukraine, that not only was Russia provoked into this conflict by two decades of arrogant Western aggression, greatly augmented when in 2013-2014 the West instigated a regime change operation in Kiev that was undemocratic, unrepresentative of the majority of Ukrainians, and murderously violent….But that, given this Western aggression, direct and indirect, against Russia, Russia had no alternative but to take the kind of action that it began to take in February 2022.