Others in the thread have helpfully outlined Russia's goals for this conflict, but it is important to note that this didn't come out of nowhere one day (even if that is how the western press tries to present it.) This has been escalating since the coup in Ukraine in 2013, Russia has repeatedly tried to be diplomatic, and has had their concerns dismissed. Hell, Russia doesn't even want to be antagonistic towards NATO if they don't have to be (they even tried to join them in the early 2000s).

As others have said, we don't support Russia, we aren't Russian nationalists. We do however, want to try to understand a conflict and why it happens, and if there was any way to prevent it from happening so we can make sure similar conflicts don't happen in the future.

The problem with the western media (US media in particular) is that it tends to just point to another nation and just call them bad guys, like the villain in a movie. This doesn't analyse anything or provide any preventative power (in fact, for the US, it is usually the opposite, they want wars so they can keep their military industrial complex ticking over and making profit off of death and destruction.)

If people uncritically accept that an "enemy nation" is a bad guy, they can easily fall for the next bad guy, and the next, and so on forever. The only way to actually prevent stuff like this is to try and understand why it happens.

To be totally honest, for me personally, I'm not exactly for Ukraine as much as I'm against Russia

If nothing else, your honesty is refreshing lol