Some people say Putin has lost his compass. My take is that it was a conscious move timed very well. Killing people? I think that belongs to NATO and allies. Let us not forget the distribution of weapons to the population in the condition where there was not general mobilization. That is a page from the CIA playbook, that was used in 1989 in Romania.
So, if you try to understand what is what, just read the history after 2018. Among the facts related to the current conflict, you will see how much land Ukraine grabbed from Romania and subsequent Moldova, which culminated with the Snakes Island in the Black Sea which was claimed and 'given' to Ukraine via the 'legal' system quite recently. NATO must have been pleased with Romania.
Yeah....
Let me suggest that there is a common pattern at play here. One which is very human and transcends national boundaries and nationalistic views.
The pattern relates to what happens to a nation when it goes through a social upheaval and essentially dissolves into pieces (different smaller factional nation states). The collapse of Yugoslavia back in the early 90s is a poster child example of what takes place as a collapsing nation unwinds.
Yugoslavia was held together for decades, even with rampant ethnic tensions, at the hands of a Soviet supported Autocrat. When it finally unwound and collapsed, what happened? Ethnic civil wars, and "ethic cleansing" (genocide). When you keep ethnic tensions pent up for decades in a jar and don't allow them to express themselves, when you remove the jar, you get civil war because all those tensions suddenly unwind. And sadly there are always nations and arms dealers ready to catalyze the mayhem and genocide to allow it to inflict maximum harm and chaos.
So, taking this understanding, and applying it to the deconstruction of the 800 lb gorilla called the Soviet Union in the 90s, and all the suppressed ethnic tensions (it was a very ethnically diverse Soviet) sure enough, different break away Socialist provinces all went their own way initially, with some squabbling for control over each other to some degree though pretty well muted to be honest. And it worked fairly well for a while. But as soon as Russia became more in line with old Soviet power expressions, rather than the budding democracy it experienced at first, old tensions between former Soviet provinces began to fester and boil over. First it was Chechens, then Georgians, then Ukraine, and now Ukraine again. The Soviet being a much bigger system to rebalance, it is of course a more volatile set of events unwinding than even in the post Yugolav civil wars.
What I am saying is that much of what we are seeing right now is the continued unwinding of many decades of Soviet suppression of different ethnic groups in the name of the forward progress of the Soviet. As painful as it is to see this unwinding over the last 20 years inside the old Soviet boundaries, it is actually necessary in order to return to some state of balance in the respective societies. And given that Putin has largely continued to tamp down ethnic and social tensions, when the day comes and he steps down or moves on, it may be a very volatile trigger point for nations of the old Soviet Union. /fingers crossed they don't go full nutty when it does happen.
Honestly, the United States suffered the same thing with our own civil war over 160 year ago, and in some ways we are still struggling with it today.