It’s waging this war to extend the sphere of influence of its own bourgeoisie, hence it’s imperialist despite the side effects

I swear it’s like you have read absolutely none of the myriad of sources that have been provided for you. None of the serious analysis about this war or its causes supports this infantile view of the war, not even the imperialists’ own internal strategic analysis. Everyone (except the blinded western masses who still consume the western liberal mainstream media’s ridiculous propaganda narratives) understands that this is about Russia’s vital security concerns being trampled and its very existence as a state threatened by NATO expansion. Russia’s people understand this, Russia’s enemies understand this, and Russia’s global south allies understand this. That is why Russia is waging this war.

Every war waged between capitalist states (with the exception of national liberatory struggle) is an imperialist war.

First of all that is overly reductive.

Second of all, for the people of the Donbass this is a war of national liberation. I would seriously suggest that you start listening to what the people actually there on the ground say rather than judging from afar conditions which you do not understand. The people in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics had been begging Russia to intervene for the whole period of the 2014-2022 war that the fascist Kiev regime, which was installed after the Western orchestrated Maidan coup, was waging against them. They were the ones who had to live under bombs, bullets and shells, and when Russia finally launched its long overdue intervention in 2022 those people celebrated.

Start by watching a few of the videos on this channel by a native of Mariupol: https://youtu.be/SuZxW7-JKCk

You can also watch interviews on the street with people from that region. There are thousands on Russian media, but if you don’t trust them search for independent journalists on YouTube such as Patrick Lancaster, look for some of his older videos where he interviews locals. Search for other independent journalists who have covered the conflict and have spoken to locals. Or you can watch one of the documentaries that others have recommended on the Ukraine war megapost.

There are plenty of resources available for you to educate yourself. If you continue to refuse to do so there is no point in continuing this conversation.

Funnily enough applying Stalin’s ideas in Foundations of Leninism to the current situation makes the Ukrainian population opposing both western and eastern imperialists the anti-imperialist forces in this war, even if they are influenced by bourgeois ideology

There are Ukrainians on both sides of this war. It is not “the Ukrainian population” which is choosing to wage this unwinnable war against Russia on behalf of NATO just so that the imperialist West can weaken one of its main rivals, it is a neo-Nazi terrorist regime which is brutally oppressing the Ukrainian population, imprisoning and torturing and murdering dissidents, and forcefully abducting Ukrainians off the streets to send them to the trenches as cannon fodder. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. This regime is not merely “influenced by bourgeois ideology”, they are outright Nazi worshippers who celebrate WWII Holocaust perpetrator Nazi collaborator war criminals as their “national heroes”. That is who Russia is fighting, not the people of Ukraine.

If you think that Stalin’s writing supports siding with literal fascists who are fighting an imperialist proxy war to ethnically cleanse Russian speakers off of their own land, you are out of your mind.