I would start with the excellent analysis from our own @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net on this thread:

https://hexbear.net/post/6932331

There’s a book by a liberal dork called Prisoners of Geography that does a decent material analysis about how different countries are constrained by the geography of their land. It was written in 2014. He acknowledges:

• Tibet is an extremely important headwater and will always be a part of China.
• Ukraine is of major startegic importance and will always be in the Russian sphere of influence.

It isn’t super deep, but it can be a useful resource to toss at somebody who has never read a book before.

Not books, but… There are a few users here who often post comments with a trove of helpful links on this (and other topics). @davel@lemmy.ml for example, often posts things like this which I will paste below.

He talks about NATO expansion as if that’s something the US is pushing

The US has been pushing that since the Warsaw Pact dissolved, and was planning for it long before. Weaponizing Europe, Countering Eurasia: Mackinder, Brzezinski, Nuland and the Road to the Ukraine War

Next you’re going to tell us that NATO is a defensive alliance.

Previously:

The US-backed Maidan coup and US & Ukraine-supported fascist paramilitary attacks on eastern & southern Ukraine:

• Reuters, 2014: Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
• Leaked recording between Nuland and Pyatt: audio | transcript
• Counterpunch, 2014: US Imperialism and the Ukraine Coup
• BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
• Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
• Consortium News, 2015: The Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
• The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
• The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
• WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
• Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
• The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
• openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
• Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
• Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
• Consortium News, 2023: The West’s Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s recent comments about getting his mediation efforts squashed in the early days of the war adds more to the growing pile of evidence that Western powers are intent on regime change in Russia.
• Internationalist 360°, 2022–2024: History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
• NYT, 2024: U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide

 
NATO expansion:

• George Washington Univ., 2017: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
• Orinoco Tribune, 2022: Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War With Russia
• Al Mayadeen, 2023: Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements
• Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
• Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: NATO Chief Admits NATO Expansion Was Key to Russian Invasion of Ukraine

 
NATO in general:

• The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
• CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
• Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
• Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
• Gabriel Rockhill, 2020: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It

More from this thread:

No. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.

Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.

• Robert Parry, 2015: The Mess that Nuland Made
• Jeffery Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace

Also, Ukraine really does have a fascism problem and has for a long time, and the coup government has materially supported it.

• BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
• Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
• The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
• The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
• WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
• Reuters, 2018: [Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem

There’s actually more that got cut off, but I exceeded the character limit for comments. Hopefully this can give you what you’re looking for. If not, then try mining u/davel’s comment history. Here is another one, titled If not for the US/NATO, this war wouldn’t have happened in the first place.