But its not complicated at all. Ukraine is every year more prosperous and more connected to the west and Russia is weakening kleptocracy led by a disconnected, malicious, evil dictator that fears that if it doesn't seize the opportunity to return to its vision of a greater Russia that has a seat at the table in the grand scheme of things that it will ultimately be subsumed by either the west or by its own people who see clear evidence of a better way so close at hand.
In service of this goal it has turned first to brutal invasion of another nations sovereign territory and when this proved ineffectual to brutal mass murder of the Ukrainian people, war crimes, mercenaries, and assassins in hopes of breaking a nations people and its leaders.
The complicated thing is a full analysis of why its war machine and intelligence is so broken as to lead them to believe this would lead to course of action would be profitable.
Actually I have followed a plethora of information from individuals on the ground and historical information from multiple sources. What I have posted is as close to objective reality as I can obtain and I am very confident it its veracity.
The fact that you have information from "individuals on the ground" and from "multiple sources" doesn't make the information correct or unbiased. What you posted may as well have come directly from Ukrainian state media.
"Putin was jealous that Ukraine was doing so much better than Russia, so he attacked them for no reason to bring them back down" is just a laughable take on the situation.
It's also not what I said. I said Putin had a vision of a "Greater Russia" composed of the components of its former empire and reached out to grasp them before its declining strength made this impossible. This is literally what Putin said in prior speeches.
I also said that democracies on their doorstep are a dangerous precedent for the serfs the kleptocrats are presently robbing.
Let us not try to discount the complexity of the Russian motivation for war (and no matter what they are, it's still morally wrong).
Firstly, Ukraine was most prosperous in 2013. Even in recent years, Ukrainian wealth was growing more slowly than that of, say, Belarus. Even with sanctions, up until the pandemic, Russian GDP per capita PPP was increasing at a similar rate as with Ukraine. So it is unlikely that this was the only motivation, Ukraine was never on track to becoming more prosperous than Russia or it's satellites, nor even becoming relatively more prosperous in recent years. Indeed, Ukraine's economic system is pretty similar to that of Russia, and both countries have had similar levels of corruption by various indexes.
Then, there are obviously many other possible motivations, neither of them were a justification alone, and many analysts squabble still about what they were. So yes, "it's complicated".
The data of the past decade doesn’t show this to be the case. Check Ukraine with Belarus and Russia economic numbers. It negates your or really the west’s framing.
