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I think there are parts of the war in Ukraine that are attributable to the US but they are far more near-term than the expansion of NATO. Russia was already de facto at war with Ukraine. That needs to be considered in any question, because Russia didn't start a new war in 2022, just massively escalate an existing one. Why did Russia choose that moment, instead of any other, to escalate? The most probable explanation to justify the timing is the spike in oil prices. It has since been weirdly memory-holed that the oil and gas price spike predates the escalation of the war in favour of the claim that the war triggered the spike. The cause for the spike was a long-term consequence of low investment in fossil fuel extraction due to environmental policies, and the medium-term consequence of the oil and gas glut that happened in 2020, which reduced production, slamming into the rise in consumption as economies got un-shuttered. The US, in part, is responsible for shuttering global economies in 2020. High oil and gas prices motivate Russia to make a move in two ways. First, by making sanctions more expensive to implement. Second, by providing the government a big budget surplus that might be put to use. However, judging by the initial invasion strategy (Russia basically trying to win in 3 days) that this was less intended to outright fund a war of attrition, and more intended to soothe over the costs of integrating captured territory into a victorious Russia while deterring sanctions long enough to make Russia's victory a fait accompli.
While it isn't quite fair to describe Russia as a Chinese client state, Putin starting a war without Xi's approval was likely to go badly. Xi didn't want the Beijing winter Olympics disrupted by a war. Putin announces that he is recognising the independence of the DPR/LPR the day after the closing ceremony and tanks cross the border three days after that.
Putin could have taken the decision to escalate at any time since Q4 2019, and between the pandemic and the need to keep China on side he ends up acting on that decision at the first opportunity. Personally, I think he took the decision shortly before publishing On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians in July 2021.
I go long stretches these days forgetting the olympics are still a thing, they really dropped the ball on that one this past decade
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There's about 8 years between the initial invasion and the escalation. The Winter Olympics would only be a factor for a small proportion of that period. And the main country responsible for disrupting them was China itself, with it's continued use of covid restrictions.
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