it's always important to remember where the imperial core is, and who is dividing the world into camps (NATO) and who is responding to that division (non-NATO countries).

The Russian war in Ukraine is ultimately a side effect of the civil war in Ukraine, which is a side effect of neoliberalization of Ukraine, which is a side effect of the end of the USSR. All problems in that region stem ultimately from that event, but libs are incapable of seeing the end of the USSR as a bad thing, so they have to invent a world where former soviet nations are guilty of imperialism against NATO proxies and postcolonial countries are anti-democratic dictatorships who have to be brought in line by the "rules-based world order" (NATO).