Thank you for your response.

I will say that politicians often get their base riled up as a means to protect power. A good example is the Democratic Party's insistence that it was Russian interference in the 2016 election that caused their loss of the presidency. The interference probably did have that effect in USA's coin flip elections, but it did not cause millions and millions of voters to shift their allegiance. The DNC will never admit that it was doing a poor job of bettering the life of average Americans. It blames the Russians instead.

I could give more examples like this, but I would consider the NATO argument similar to this vein. It was a tool to keep average Russians riled up and Putin in power.

Just about everyone predicted a quick end to this war (myself included). So the "Russian invasion to make more money from Ukraine" is a plausible reason for this war.

Substituting Russian oligarchs for Ukrainian oligarchs (which was happening before the war) is not exactly a great solution to deal with corruption. But I think it was progress. In time, Ukraine will reach corruption levels in line with western democracies.

Ukraine wanted move toward the European umbrella and away from the Russian umbrella. That is the the right of Ukraine. If Russia did not like this, it should have asked "Why are we losing influence?"

The invasion of Russia is a moot point. The USA (and the rest of the west) failed in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The logic that we would invade Russia--a much bigger country with a much stronger military-- is unfathomable. But Russia kept riling up its population that the west was intending on invading simply because of past history.

There is a relationship of political leaders riling up populations to keep those leaders in power. Russia is better at this theater than other nations. Even today, many Russians believe the invasion into Ukraine is justified.