Well, Lukashenko also said it, and the editor of RT said. But yes.

The other evidence they use is the feint that was sent directly at Kiev. They think the feint was a real genuine attempt to capture the capital city, and then from there take all the evidence that it was a feint and spin it into bad planning. So specifically, if you send a feint, and you're committed to that entire allocation of soldiers being wiped out, you don't send them in with supplies to last for a long slog - you send them in ultra light on a suicide mission. And that's essentially what the deployment to Kiev was, a group with an ultralight kit heading straight for Kiev to draw out forces and create confusion in the early days of the war. That feint was destroyed and then when they realized it was feint they spun it hard into "look at these fools who thought they could end this thing in three days" basically as a way of avoiding the obvious conclusion that they wasted time dealing with a trick.

It would be like if someone sent a feint filled with woodland creatures and animated scarecrows and after you waste strategically valuable time dealing with them you spend the rest of the war saying "this opponent is so dumb they thought they could win with scarecrows" when the reality is that you got tricked and the feint did exactly what it was intended to do.

Because Russia has no reason to be invading neighbouring countries?

Idk just a thought. Not sure why we reward the aggressors. Remember that time the Russian backed separatists who totally weren’t just Russian military shot down that airliner?

First and Second Chechen Wars

Purely defensive, internal conflicts on internationally recognized Russian territory against CIA backed jihadist terrorists who butchered civilians and committed heinous acts of terrorism such as taking an entire school hostage and murdering hundreds of children.

Puppet Leader in Belarus Alexander Lukashenko

Lukashenko has been the leader of Belarus longer than Putin has been president. Belarus is in a Union State with Russia, and still has more autonomy from Russia than the average EU state has from Brussels.

Puppet leader in Ukraine Victor Yanukovych

He was the furthest thing from a puppet. If anything he was Western-leaning, but trying to keep Ukraine neutral. His one unforgivable crime in the eyes of the West was rejecting a terrible EU trade deal that would have ruined Ukraine's economy (and did) in favor of an objectively much better one from Russia.

Georgian War

Literally even the EU investigation into that conflict admitted that Georgia started it. Emboldened by believing they had NATO backing, the US puppet president, installed in a color revolution, attacked the region of South Ossetia which was under the protection of Russian peacekeepers.

Annexation of Crimea

The people of Crimea overwhelmingly voted in a referendum to rejoin Russia in response to the fascist, Western-orchestrated Maidan coup.

The majority ethnic Russian population of Crimea did not want the same brutal neo-nazi terror militias that were terrorizing ethnic Russian regions across the rest of Ukraine to come to them, nor did they want to be forced to abide by the russophobic laws passed by the illegally installed Maidan regime, which Crimea, like the Donbass, did not recognize as legitimate.

Russia's actions in Crimea were a response to a crisis provoked by Western intervention and the overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected government.

Role in Syria conflict

Russia co-operated with the legitimate Syrian government against a brutal Zionist/US armed and funded Al Qaeda/ISIS terrorist insurgency.

Role in African dictatorships in Burma Faso and Niger

Same thing. They are co-operating with the official government of those countries in counter-terrorist operations against Western backed jihadist terrorists.

None of this constitutes imperialism. In fact almost all of these are examples of Russia pushing back against Western imperialist aggression, encroachment and proxies.

marxists.org/archive/lenin/wor…

Imperialism is defined as the monopoly stage of finance capital.

Russian economy is dominated by the state and oligarchs, not by independent finance capital. It's territorial expansion while being an regional historical imperialist action is defensive and self limiting and driven mostly by nationalism and security concerns.

Your list provides critical empirical evidence for a dialectical analysis but requires contextualization to avoid oversimplification. See response from comrade @cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml

Comrade cfgaussian already answered perfectly here. Essentially, you mix in defensive wars with allyships with other countries, and claim the defensive wars are for imperialism and the allyships "puppetry." The Sahel States are progressive, and are allied with Russia in their national liberation from France and western imperialism.

I am a Marxist-Leninist, yes. Imperialism needs to be analyzed primarily by the definition of imperialism Lenin gives, not on whether or not a country interacts with others. In most of these examples, such as the Sahel States, Russia is working against imperialism.

Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism by which finance capital and world monopoly are dominant. Russia does not have this. Russia is currently under the control of nationalists, not finance capital, and it is the west that has that global financial monopoly.

Your error is in both erasing Lenin's analysis of imperialism and viewing any kind of interaction Russia has as inherently imperialist working backwards from there. To use your rhetoric, I suggest you reflect first on what imperialism is, why we define it as such and how it operates, and consider why Marxist-Leninists therefore have the understanding of the Russian Federation that we do.