Hiku said:
Tober said:
Putin wants a potential threat away from Moskou. All Russian leaders do. Moskou is very close to the Ukraine border. A potential NATO membership is seen as an existential risk by the Russians. Russia has been invaded twice from the west through the Ukraine plains. By Napoleon and Hitler. Russia wants a buffer zone they control. It's not important to them how they control it. Either by leadership in Ukraine that is loyal to them or control outright. This is the reason Russia through the Soviet Union kept control of Eastern Europe after WW2. Ukraine leadership was a partner for a long time, until the coup happened that disposed this leadership then pro-EU leadership came into place. This caused Russia first to take Crimea and later escalated to the invasion after the door to NATO was opened to Ukraine. It's not a movie or video game where the evil one is just evil because "I want to rule the world wra ha ha". Putin does not go about this because he has some dream of Russia taking over Europe just for glory or anything like that. It's 100 millions Russians against 400 million Europeans. That would be impossible. He's looking to restore that buffer zone in some way. Obviously the invasion is really bad and some other solution needs to be found. The only one I can think of is giving Putin some kind of assurances Ukraine will never join NATO for him to back down. Until then we are in perpetual war. |
There are several other NATO nations closer to Moscow than Ukraine. Even a bordering nation. (And now there are two.)
And Putin's invasion essentially forced Sweden and Finland to join as well. Effectively making the NATO "threat" even worse. And he seemed fine with that. 
Despite Finland sharing a gigantic border with Russia.
This is not about a supposed threat from a defensive alliance, because they've never been the agressor. A ton of countries were invaded by Germany in WW2. That's not going to happen again, unless the agressor wants to invoke Article 5. So I don't see how Russia could see Ukraine as a threat by joining a defensive alliance.
Rather, Russia could no longer invade them if they do. So they had to do it before that happened. I didn't say Russia wants to take over all of Europe. But Ukraine and Russia are of the same people. That's part of why he wants to unite them back into Russia "where they belong". |
Lol. Lmao.
How I completely forgot about that statement from Putin but I'll forgive myself considering Russia spits out shit on a constant basis. Yeah, really no more has to be said, Russia is fine with Finland/Sweden joining which puts their entire Northern Fleet at risk but not okay with Ukraine joining because it's a "territorial dispute" despite the fact that other NATO countries border Russia.
Also if they took Ukraine, they'd expand the NATO countries bordering them to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, Lol.
Territorial dispute simply = We believe Ukraine is ours by right and Ukraine doesn't exist as a country.
Bold is also true, NATO isn't the reason for the invasion but it's the one thing that would stop the invasion.
