I believe it was purely for reasons of expansion. I don’t know exactly what our response should have been, but we need to at least acknowledge that Ukraine is defending their sovereignty and Putin/Russia are the aggressors. We should support them at least minimally.
Not going to disagree with you there. I just want to hilight the fact that the totalitarian nature of russia means that they don’t need a justification, as putin is de facto a dictator and can decide anything he wants. So any claims of “justification” can be ignored as propaganda, and you can see this in the fact that this “justification” is in constant flux. It started with protecting Donbass, then denazification, via stopping a dirty bomb, and I think they’re going with antiterror nowadays.
Same goes for threats coming from their propaganda apparatus about “consequences” regarding “crossing red lines”. No justification is needed. There’s nothing preventing them from making good on their threats tomorrow if they so wanted to.