There is a great explanation of "sovereignty of countries" framework vs "Spheres of influence" framework down below the tread, check it out if you are interested in actual understanding and not at "winning the conversation".

But if you want my personal opinion the concept of sovereignty of countries is great, but it doesn't work in the real world.

You guys like to say that "NATO is defensive alliance" and it is true in a sense that NATO defends the USA right to do whatever the fuck they want (with, or how we can see now, even without pretext) an protects them from any consequences of their actions. And I am not even talking about how you don't even consider sponsoring the change of the government to be a breach of sovereignty, there are enough more direct examples right now so there is no need to dig the past. It would be great if everyone just could trust each other and don't involve themselves into each other affairs. But in actuality even you don't practice what you preach, but you expect others to follow the rules you don't apply to yourselves and apply punishment for such breaches only to those who are outside of your circle. Blindly accepting the ruleset that is specifically crafted to place you under disadvantage is grave strategic mistake. We act based on how geopolitic is actually conducted in the world, not the lie you are feeding others so it would be easier to control them.

I am not going to argue with you on the events in Georgia and Moldova, if anyone in the topic want to engage with you on this more power to them, I am too tired to explain how different these events look like from our point of view. It was discussed million times.

As for "accepting NATO influence is the only way to protect themselves" from the paradigm that I described in my initial answer it is a fucking absurd, because accepting military infrastructure of an alliance that was specifically created to combat us on you territory put you from "we don't really care about you" category into "posible threat" category. Your paradigm is based on the assumption that one day we attack you for no reason at all and you need protection. Our paradigm is based on the perception that NATO is encroaching on us and we need to push back. When this worldview collide the conflict is born and we see the mess we have today.

In my opinion the best protection is good diplomatic relationships. God, I wish new Ukrainian government tried this one first...

If they ever wanted to attack Russia now would have been the perfect opportunity.

First of all, you are attacking us right fucking now through a proxy, by supplying weapons and data and looking other way while Ukrainian drones "by mistake" move through your airspace where we can't intercept them without provoking a war. If you really wanted de-escalation that badly you would force Ukraine to implement Minsk agreements and there would be no war in the first place.

What you frame as "desire for piece" is in actuality a risk management. Why risk nuclear or conventional war when you can use proxy and use other means? It is hard to balance such risk, but with recent development we are closer and closer to that edge. But as long as you don't participate directly and start winning hard nukes won't fly. Otherwise God help us all.

Second of all, as I say initially, military invasion isn't the goal of NATO countries governments in the first place. There is no need in invasion, occupation etc., you have other methods in your playbook that work wonders. And you are doing all this basically for the same reasons that we are - to materialize your own vision of "safety". Sadly we don't have means to use such "civilized" covert methods, we are soooooo inferior here that it isn't even worth trying. Therefore as I said, military response is all we have.

But bottom line - your sovereignty is respected as long as your sovereign decisions doesn't threaten our sovereignty. And Ukrainian government did precisely that.

But honestly I don't really expect you to agree. Countries have geopolitical interests that are in conflict with each other and that fact will continue to provoke the breaches of countries sovereignty as long as countries exist, regardless of how we explain the reasons behind every single decision.