Pretext.

This is coolbert:

The exact moment I saw this headline I knew there was going to be trouble.

Pronouncements of the Pope in Rome regarding the Ukraine Conflict.

NO good guys and NO bad guys? Somehow. Perhaps. Oversimplified.

"Pope Francis says Ukraine war 'perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented'"

From cbsnews.com the story BY ANNA MATRANGA JUNE 14, 2022.

"Rome — Pope Francis has told a group of European Jesuit news editors that the war in Ukraine was 'perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented,' and he cautioned against oversimplifying the conflict."

"In an interview published Tuesday in the Jesuit publication 'La Civilta' Cattolica,' the pope said that in Russia's war on Ukraine, "there are no metaphysical good guys and bad guys, in an abstract sense.'" 

"He said that months before the war, a head of state warned him that NATO was 'barking at the gates of Russia,' and that Russia would not tolerate it, which could lead to war."

"bark up the wrong tree: to promote or follow a mistaken course" [strictly an English expression?]

Comments:

* The militia of the separatist break-away regions of the eastern Ukraine - Luhansk and Donetsk aided and abetted by their Russian mentors in a stalemated trench-style war with the Ukrainian national army and associated friendly militia for the LAST seven years.

* All wars are fought for a multiplicity of reasons. A single predominate reason may exist but that decision to initiate hostilities never based on a single justification.

Wars as even engaged in by the American military since 1776 each and everyone I might venture done so with argument, case, explanation, and rationale in some manner dubious and specious.

There you have it.

coolbert.