Consider this. The USA dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan while negotiating with them, in particular negotiating with them through the USSR. The USA made it very clear that it’s mission was to “contain the spread of communism” which meant creating lethal threat to the USSR and particularly Russia. It took over the imperial colony of Korea from Japan and then proceeded to destroy fully half the country by creating completely artificial pretense.

It built NATO which sponsored and trained neo-nazi groups all over Europe through operation Gladio, it protectes Nazi officers and even gave them high command of NATO. It deployed nukes throughout Europe specifically targeting Russia and it pursued an end of MAD so that it could establish some path way to nuking Russia without retaliation.

Then the USSR was dismantled and the USA oversaw the complete destruction of the old economy and economic shock therapy that killed millions of Russians. But the conflict didn’t end despite communism ending. The US kept building up its nuclear capabilities through NATO. And it turned NATO offensive. The destruction of Yugoslavia was as much symbolic as physical, with Yugoslavia the last of the communist programs in the region.

Russia attempted to join the imperialist club. It wanted to split the world with the imperialists and make a lot of money doing it, but the USA said no. And then proceeded to demonstrate that it would stop at nothing less than full subjugation of Russia. The USA was on the ground during the EuroMaidan event, mere months after the first ever NATO exercise in Ukraine. After EuroMaidan, the number of military exercises with NATO and Ukraine increased tremendously, and included nuclear capabilities and even included a simulated invasion of Kaliningrad. They were flying b-52 bombers in Ukraine to show their readiness to deploy nukes.

Russia, through many many negotiations and even treaties, has been trying to get the other side to the negotiating table for decades now. Russia does not want to be full subjugated by the West but every single piece of evidence we have is that the USA wants Russia subjugated and it has not stopped pushing for those conditions.

Russia has been escalating incredibly judiciously, incredibly explicitly, without any real attempt at hiding the fact that it cannot afford to lose the neutrality of Eastern Ukraine as a buffer against invasion - invasion that happened once under Napoleon, once after WW1, and once again by the Third Reich. This is not a hypothetical issue. Every invasion of Russia took that route and killed millions.

So yes, it is wild that invading a neighbor is the only way that the USA can be brought to the negotiating table, and even at that it took years of death before the USA would even entertain it. But that’s the bloodlust we have to deal with.