Way to miss the point and claim things I never said at the same time.

Earnest religious belief means nothing without material support. You can hate someone all you want for whatever religious reasons you want but it doesn't matter unless somebody gives you guns, bombs, tanks and planes. And why would someone do that? Because of material interests.

Why did the Crusades happens (multiple times)? Because of material interests. How did those who materially benefit get ordinary people to fight? By fomenting religious fervor and hatred. Why did they do that? To further their material interests.

You mention Ukraine. Perfect example. Russia took Crimea to get a port on the Black Sea in 2014 and also to control resources in that area. Why did Russia invade in 2021? Because maintaining what is essentially an oblast (like Kaliningrad) became too expensive. Ukraine had cut off the water. So Russia ideally wanted to despose the government and install another Lukachenko puppet government (like they have in Belarus) but, failing that, they wanted to secure a land bridge to Crimea. Just look at a map.

One could say the exact same thing you do about "African agency" about the Russian-speaking people of eastern Ukraine but that's just an excuse. Putin doesn't care about that. He cares about the land they live on. And we've seen this exact playbook many times over. For example, Hitler used to annex Austria and the Sudetenland to ostensibly re-unite German-speaking people but again, that wasn't the point.

Now you might say in any of these places the people are motivated to kill for ethnic and/or religios interests. They may genuinely believe in this (but again, ask yourself why) but there are also a ton of opportunists. An absolute perfect example of this is Maria Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who opposed Maduro in Venezuela and her two biggest goals are to privatize Venezuelan industries (previously nationalized) and to further support Israel. She may as well put out a press release saying she's open to the backing her in a coup. Privatizing national industries for Western companies to profit? Sounds a whole lot like material interests to me.

Go back in history and ask yourself why the borders of Sudan are what they are, just like we could for Rwanda and a host of other civil wars. Why exactly are these different ethnic groups in the same country? Well, that's a colonizer special, perfected by the British Empire, to sow division in the locals so the colonizer can profit. Once again, material interests.