He spent 8 years trying to negotiate for peace in good faith with people (Merkel and Hollande) who later admitted that they had none. They only wanted war.
He invaded in 2014. He wants nothing but war. If he didn't, leaving Crimea would have been on the table. It never was. Don't kid yourself. Putin loves dead Russians to feed to the meat grinder.
Ukraine is a democracy so your entire premise is way off. Try again. Russia, however, is a fascist dictatorship and Portion has put many Nazis into power on occupied territories.
They elected Zelensky then immediately outlawed all communist parties, outlawed protesting, outlawed strikes, postponed elections… real democracy vibes.
There were, and are, Washington Post and New York Times articles about this from before the latest unpleasantness made that an inconvenient truth to not acknowledge.
Welcome to the real world where propaganda written by empires is literally "Who are you going to believe, Me or your lying eyes?"
No one made that claim. It's funny that that is what you backpedal to when you are proven wrong, though.
Both were brought into the government military. And, when Zelensky ordered them away from the front lines in order to comply with the Minsk accords to end the war, which is what Zelensky ran on, by the by, they refused those orders.
The Nazi elements weren't pegged from them, either. If they have gone down, it is due to the high casualty rates.
But, all of that is immaterial.
You made a wrong claim, it was proven false, and you just moved the goalposts to other wrong claims.
You're either arguing in bad faith and a paid propagandist, or you're one of those unfortunate souls incapable of admitting when they are wrong. For your personal life I hope it is the former.
Sure. Just like when the US flooded Tejas with Americans and then the US helped liberate Texas from Mexico. Liberation through imperialism is not real liberation. Don't be so naive.
Leading up to? Cherry picking a small time period is not a good look. Decades of Russification and displacing Crimean Tatars (and straight up starving them) damn near eliminated them from the peninsula for years. In 1989 Crimean Tatars made up 1.6% of the population compared with a third 50 years prior. After a couple decades with Ukraine, about 11% of the peninsula are Tatars now.