© Brendan HoffmanBerkut riot police throw stones at anti-government protesters, who are throwing rocks in return, on Independence Square on February 19, 2014 in Kiev,
There is a very sound argument to be made that 'Putin's war in Ukraine' was started not by Russia at all
but by the Ukrainians on 14 April 2014. Look up what happened on that day in Kiev. The new Ukrainian government led by acting president Oleksandr Turchynov declared an 'anti-terrorist operation' (ATO) on Donbass rebels.
The latter had done nothing more than mirror the Maidan revolt (sans the false flag terrorist snipers' attack) in order to oppose it by seizing government administration buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk. Instead of negotiating with the still small band of rebels, the ATO sent the Ukrainan army against the people of the Donbass. Kiev was first to deploy tanks, warplanes, mortar, and artillery in Ukraine doing so against Donbass's largely ethnic Russian population in fairly indiscriminate matter. Villages were subject to strafing and bombing from the air.
It did not stop there.
In Mariupol, some 20 policemen, who rejected Kiev's Madian regime, holed up in their headquarters, and
Ukrainian tanks and neofascist fighters destroyed the building and those inside. On 2 May 2014, pro-Kiev militants carried out a pogrom in Odessa, burning alive some 45 anti-Maidan picketers. None of this was reported in Westerm media or condemned by Western governments. To the contrary, Washington and Brussels offered words of encouragement about the new 'democratic Ukraine' and showered funding on Kiev.
It was only after all of the terrorism noted above that Russia intervened to buttress the rebels, doing so with assistance, weapons, volunteer fighters, and small numbers of troops. Moscow did not militarily intervene until the rebel forces were threatened with encirclement and annihilation in late summer 2014.
Comment: Regarding his comment that regional states are solving there own problems; it actually seems that Russia has assumed the role of a military power that is thwarting Western warmongering and helping maintain a modicum of global stability, whilst China is deploying its economic and technological might for infrastructure projects both regionally, but also transnationally.
That said, both super powers do, indeed, work on the basis of mutually beneficial deals and for regional states having autonomy: Geopolitical paradigm shifts and coping with psychopaths: An Interview with Professor Sergei A. Karaganov