> What's that all about? They surely don't regard themselves as 'liberators' .... do they?
Yes, I'm afraid they do. In their world, "the Ukraine", a region of Russia, was illegally captured in the turmoil following the breakdown of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev - the rollback from Berlin through Poland went far too far, all the way "in" to Russia. And now, after years and years of tolerating this illegal theft and witnessing the terrible treatment of the Russians living under the rule of the illegal usurpers, and slowly doing something about it like the recapture of Crimea in 2014, they are finally looking to put matters right and get "the Ukraine" back into the folds of Mother Russia's skirts ... by bombing the whole place to smithereens and killing whoever is stupid enough to be nearby at the time.
Of course, Ukraine's riches (see
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/28/russias-ukraine-invasion-threatens-global-trade/ for a short list) and position on the Black Sea have nothing to do with it. They are merely what's rightfully Russia's anyway ...
That is their logic. They are liberating Ukraine from its captors, back into Russia where it belongs.