They opted out of two peace treaties they said they were going to sign which would’ve avoided all this. Zelensky ran his campaign on signing Minsk I and II accords and then didn’t. He’s a puppet dictator for the west and NATO and the Ukrainian people are being used as human shields for a contractor’s war.
This is really an ignorant post. Minsk agreements were signed at the point of a gun. At the time of the first agreement, russia had 20.000 troops in Donbass. They had already driven the meager Ukraine troops ( pro- russian president Yanukovych had stopped funding the army and let it deteriorate to almost nothing) out of most of Donbass and threatened to keep going to Kyiv. Minsk II was just another stalling tactic by Ukraine to prevent russia from full invasion. If implemented it would not only have given independence to these Ukrainian territories, but would have given them substantial representation in the Ukrainian government so they could sabotage from within. Ukraine agreed to this so they could continue to build up their military to prevent a russian invasion. At every step they did what was necessary for the nation to survive.
Since the Minsk accords were signed before Zelensky ran for office, obviously he couldn't run on a platform that he would sign them. He spoke only russian himself and came from a pro-russian part of the country and thought he could talk with Putin and come up with a compromise. Soon he realized that Putin was not interested in compromise and really wanted to destroy Ukraine economically. (Building of Kerch bridge was one example, built so that large Ukrainian ships could not take grain and ore from their main port due to low height of bridge).
Still, Donbass was already de facto independent; Ukraine never tried to invade it and in fact were under orders to only return shell fire from Putin's proxies, who were trained and directed by russian troops. So why wasn't Putin satisfied with the status quo? Why did he order his proxies to keep shelling Ukraine every night for years?
Zelensky obviously is not a "puppet dictator"; why would anyone parrot the russian take on this? There is no dispute that he was elected in a fair and honest election by an overwhelming majority. I also want to remind that USA was not providing any substantial weapons to Ukraine before the russian invasion, only a few sniper rifles and rocket propelled grenades.
While I am at it, I would like to include a little history. The only reason there were any "pro-russian" areas in Ukraine is because in the 30's Stalin starved to death millions of Ukrainians and then moved millions of russians onto their lands and into their homes. He also forcibly deported many Ukrainians and of course all the Tatars from Crimea.
So let's remind again who started this war. And let's remind again that the prominent russian military contractor Prigozhin has admitted that the invasion was not because there were nazis in Ukraine, not because russia was worried about NATO, but was a simple resource grab by russian elite. And as we see, once russia took over territories they stole Ukrainian grain and metal products and exported them. They have even removed entire factories and taken to russia.