Ask Lemmygrad

Nothing ironic about it as Russia is not fascist. Russia is more anti-fascist now than it has been at any time since 1991 due to the fact that every Russian can clearly see the fascist, racist and genocidal nature of the Nazi regime in Kiev that they are fighting.

Before the Maidan coup Russia was perfectly happy with Ukraine in its then borders, but when Banderite Nazis who worship holocaust perpetrators as their national heroes take over their neighbor, threaten to join a hostile military alliance and launch a campaign to construct an ethnically pure society based on Russophobia and pro-Nazi historical revisionist myths as its national identity, well they forfeit their right to the territory and the ethnically Russian population living there given to them by the Soviet Union.

Russia has a right to ensure its security and the safety and security of Russians who declared they want no part of the abomination that Ukraine became after the US engineered color revolution and overthrow of their legitimately elected president.

People have a right to self-determination and the referendums held in all of the regions of former eastern Ukraine that Russia has annexed have expressed clearly the will of the people living there to rejoin their Russian motherland.

Also, Russia has not annexed any other ex-Soviet territories, so this is not "yet another", this is the first time such measures became necessary due to the ceaseless aggression and hatred of the West against Russia and the Russian people.

Edit: looks like Lemmy put my reply on the wrong post

Russia has very conservative attitudes but they remain without much Nazism at all, particularly because of their Soviet history.

I have no doubt Putin desires some form of increased Russian prestige and power, but from what we can see, Russia doesn't really have the same developed capitalism where there is an impetus to expand and conquer (they have a fairly low GDP and nothing else suggesting colonialism). So we can't apply our American/western notions of power/prestige = dominate other countries.

Nor would suggesting they are trying to expand their territory be correct in the context of the history of this war, since the line Putin drew was "do not join NATO" because that threatens Russian sovereignty. So even if Russia does gain territory and even if that is desired by Putin, then sovereignty and defense are the issues that have precedence because the reality is that the US is trying to use Ukraine as a means to affect regime change in Russia and to open Russia to exploitation by the west.