npub1lp34ft9g29rwc22sgqr0wgyfjrp6hxrceuurf5c2n4s79c9zd93sutwl3w (npub1lp3…wl3w) here's the fact check + sources of the 2005 speech where he called the break up of the USSR the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, and called it his mission to revert as much of it as he could: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/06/john-bolton/did-vladimir-putin-call-breakup-ussr-greatest-geop/.
And this is Vladimir Solovyev, TV propagandist and often spokesperson of the Kremlin's line, recently stating "the only guarantee for our safety is to reach the Atlantic" https://nitter.net/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732041019930145153.
He made similar statements in the past, he called for a nuclear WWIII initiated by Russia ("we're all going to die one day anyway": https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-comforts-viewers-nuclear-war-we-all-die-someday-1701580), and he clearly stated that Ukraine was "only the beginning" https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/top-putin-propagandist-says-the-ukraine-war-is-just-the-beginning/
About Donetsk and Luhansk, I have several friends who live or used to live there. Before 2014 they didn't mind what they were part on. Half-Ukrainian, half-Russian families are very common, and kids traditionally learn both the languages. Putin just blew on the fire of ethnic divisions that nobody used to care of earlier, and used the Stalinist excuse of "protecting Russian-speaking groups" as a pretext for an invasion. If his goal was just to grab those two Russian-speaking regions, then why didn't he stop there? Why the bombs on Kherson, Kyiv, Odessa, all the way to Lviv on the Western border? Why did he take the Zaporizhzhia plant? Why did he try and stop so many times even grain exports? Why did his troops leave hundreds of km of landmines behind them? The answer is simple: he just wants Ukraine to collapse (all of it): if he can't have it, then he'd rather turn it into a failed State.
Which, from a historic point of view, puts him in a position that is actually even worse that Hitler's, and makes him deserve an even worse death.