Your title could be written by Putin. So could this:

"They’re responding to something or someone.They’re responding to us." I refuted this Mearsheimer myth in a previous article about Unrealistic Realists that ignore the structural dynamics of Russian history. Catherine the Great said, "to defend my borders I must expand them."

The war is not about us built on this unchanging fact of Russian history: empire built on the subjugation of peripheral nationalities. The war is the threat of the good example: a democratic prosperous EU member Ukraine, which would pose a mortal threat to Russia's oligarchic kleptocracy even if Nato did not exist. Russia is a land-based colonial empire destined for breakup if Ukraine remains independent.

Your title and diversionary talk of blaming the war on energy inefficiency is at best irrelevant disinformation distracting from the real issue: the structural geopolitics imperatives that motivate Russia. Western whataboutist self-blame is Putinist propaganda worthy of an RT broadcast.

My solution: make a pile of money in Canadian energy stocks--better to have Canadian than Russian energy market share--and donate part of the profits to the territorial defense of my Ukrainian friend's network of 11 villages 10 km west of Kyiv.