Crimea was a semi-autonomous region in Ukraine before the invasion, and now its a police state, so not sure what rights Putin has protected in Crimea.
Its ridiculous to say Putin was "forced" to go to war, neither Ukraine nor NATO was going to invade nuclear armed Russia.
Ukraine was almost always historically controlled by someone else.
During the 20th century, Ukraine was aligned with the USSR and the Russian people.
After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine floundered as an independent nation being pulled by east and west at the same time. Its corruption levels did not help its independence.
In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, the west staged a coup and had the Russia-aligned leader impeached, replaced with a western-aligned leader.
This did not sit well with the large portion of the Ukrainian population that was aligned with Russia.
After that, Ukraine was torn apart into pro-western and pro-Russian factions that fought each other. The new, pro-western government got involved and so did Russia.
There were no efforts to resolve the situation peacefully by the west that also used threats of NATO membership, etc. to escalate the tensions.
Russia is not the good guy. The west is not the good guy.
good points..
Ukraine has been a “country” longer than russia/muskovy
Ukraine is NOT russian. It was settled by Jews, Greeks and Vikings way before russia was a country.
putin is an evil man, a killer. That must be understood, imo