If the US would have stopped trying to destroy Russia, and then the Russian Federation since the fall of the USSR, would we be having this discussion today?

What if the US had honored its verbal promise and NOT expanded NATO past former East Germany after 1991?

Russia didn't start the war in Chechnya, or in Georgia. In both countries, the West was trying its "color revolution" type activities. Russia put those revolutions down violently.

It is impossible to see a war in Ukraine in 2022 without the US backed coup in 2014 and a following 8 years and $3,000,000,000 of NATO weapons and training.

This doesn't justify the violence of Russia, but context matters.