The war was not only provoked but made inevitable, as Ben Abelow has laid out succinctly in a new book called "How the West Bought War to Ukraine." The US overthrew the democratically elected govt in 2014, installed a US puppet neo-Nazi regime, refused to force their puppet to implement Minsk 2, refused to intervene in the war of terror against the Russian-speaking inhabitants of eastern Ukraine, armed the puppet to the hilt with NATO weapons and training, and stood by while the puppet army gathered for a massive strike against the already beleaguerd eastern provinces. None of this, or the many speeches of Putin and Lavrov, made it past the Western media filters to the general public, who were led to believe, and still believe, that the war start in Feb. 24.