Starting from that premise there is nowhere to go except total nuclear war that annihilates all of us. It is pretty well admitted that we in the west prodded and provoked until he had little choice.
Admitted? I admit no such thing. If someone’s view of reality is your stuff belongs to them, either you give it to them or you are in a conflict. Russia put a puppet government in place and that government was removed. Whether it was done by the CIA* or locally is not relevant. The point is a significant number of the Ukrainian people are willing to fight and die because they don’t want to live under a Russian Mafia state. This doesn’t mean the Ukraine government is lily white and pure. (Look at our government, drug users and bribe takers.)
Look at the near hysterical support for Ukraine coming from the former Soviet states who also don’t want to live under a Russian Mafia state. If the West provoked this, they didn’t have to provoke very hard. “Hey, you guys want some weapons?” “Yes!!”
* Does anybody think the CIA is competent enough to do this? I spent a career dealing with government officials at numerous levels. Government is the only place most of them could have worked as they were terrible employees.