Unfortunately propaganda works. And the Russians have been working at it for a long time. To be fair, so has the West. There are absolutely Russians out there who believe in conspiracy theories we've spread.

The problem of course is that propaganda like this is self serving and generally impedes the progress of civil society. We can't recommend a change in our government without getting called a dirty commie and lumped in with these guys. Russians can't do it either, not without being called a Western traitor and arrested. And yes I realize those are two different outcomes, the point is the problem is just as hard to get around.

The amount of cognitive dissonance is massive. they proudly present their pronouns, completely ignoring that doing so would get them on the russian shitlist superfast. Also, just like with the OG nazis, the enemy is simultaneously strong and weak, stupid and cunning.

It's kinda sad. after the wall fell and russia started cooperating economically with the rest of europe i was a bit of a fan, but what Putin and his cronies have done to the country and their neighbours is inexcusable.

If this is a honest question I will try to give some honest context, I do not represent a Hexbear, so these are just some views that I have that make me sceptical of the narrative that currently exists.

After the cold war there were calls to establish a common security structure including Russia to try to ensure peace in Europe. Instead the US (with pressure from past satellite states of Moscow, Poland, Czechia, etc) chose to maintain NATO and on top of that invite everybody except Russia, many foreign policy experts already warned that this was a recipe for war, but wether it was malice or incompetence they were ignored. 

Fast forward to 2008 the US suggests inviting Ukraine (and Georgia) to NATO, and Russia makes extremely clear that this would not happen, that this was a red line for them. Now you can disagree with Russias right to say anything about the military alliances of its neighbours, but the fact that Russia is a military regional power with nukes is something you need to deal with. Again wether it was incompetence or malice is hard to say but the next 14 years are basically a chain of escalatory actions by the US combined with a series of stronger and stronger warnings from Russia that this would lead to war.

During the events themselves it is hard to judge as a civilian what exactly is happening in geopolitics, the US has a very clear trackrecord of treat inflation or simply lying about its true intentions or the truth on the ground. It could of course be that this is one of those rare cases where the US are truly the Good Guys™️ or it could be that this is a ploy to weaken a rival with the only price being the destruction of a country they don't care about and the death of hundreds of thousands of military age males they don't care about.