Shocking. Horrifying. Evil.
It's been an amazing journey digging into this-- and I have to credit Tucker for drawing my attention.
Putin is incredibly complicated while at the same time, quite simple in terms of ideology. He feels wronged by the West-- who promised not to expand NATO, then did just that. He felt threated by the intent to expand again into Ukraine.
But it's much more than that. He is standing up against the West ideologically. He is standing up against Western, progressive, liberalism--which he sees as a rebranding of fascism. In one of those Hillsdale lectures there's a Canadian author who has really dug into a fellow by the name of Aleksandr Dugin-- a man who is steeped in philosophical matters whom they refer to as "Putin's Brain." He's not in government, but rather he acts as a philosophical mentor to Putin-- and anyway this modern day Rasputin has had some influence in shaping Putin's strategy and certainly has influenced Putin's thought and actions.
His book-- the Fourth Political Theory presents a model that is against the other three political tracks-- Communism, Fascism and Liberalism. Together with Putin-- they reject Soviet communism on the whole, though that is the framework that Russia fell into. While America-- has similarly fallen into a liberalism that is even worse in that it has become fascist in a higher degree than even communism could have.
This fourth theory simply stands against all of the former. Putin thinks he is fighting progressive liberalism-- the open borders, the transgender nonsense, abortion, globalism, and NATO-UN encroachment on Russia sovereignty.... NATO and the UN having embraced all of the progressive liberal ideals. To fight one is to fight all.
His ideals are in a sense admirable and in effect--- very Trump-like, as well as very much like recently elected world leaders in places like Spain, Argentina and Hungary.... all of whom are saying-- No more-- to the global insanity.
To end the war-- the West would simply have to say they want to stop it. They don't.