"unprovoked" was western propaganda. This is obvious to any serious analyst. Same as making people believe even for one second that Russia would destroy their own pipeline.
@icedquinn@ken nope, they do want as big a loss of russian manpower and equipment as possible though. the main reason the european powers support the war effort is because russia has been an imperial power threatening us since the middle ages and this is just the latest iteration of them doing the thing they do, so supporting ukraine is done automatically partially in order to prevent them from invading us and partially to try to collapse the current russian government (don't worry, they'll get a new despot in short order) after which trade can resume until this happens again
i like to tell people how my garbage room is a disguised bunker with telecom and antenna and air filters and how this is solely due to the existence of russia