This isn't about the humiliation of the west and the subjugation of Ukraine, this is about national defense strategy. The way the borders were set after the breakup of the USSR were based on certain assumptions that don't hold true today, and as a result Russia does not have a defensible border. With these annexations, they do. Additionally, it's a way to test what sort of response they'll get and prepare for similar responses in the future.
In the thirty years since the USSR dissolved no one has so much as bothered Russia or even pretended like they wanted to bother Russia. Most NATO members in Europe vastly reduced their militaries and defense spending. Everyone was content to just buy shit from them as business relationships are far cheaper than invasions and annexation. NATO only expanded east because of Russia's posturing about reclaiming former SSRs.
The only people worried about "defensible borders" are old Soviet hardliners pining for some past glory that didn't exist. They either see or pretend to see the specter of foreign invasion because it whips of nationalistic fervor. They use it to distract from their shit show governance and to blame "the West" for every self-inflicted problem they have.
The most baffling part is literally no one wants to invade Russia. Outside of their propaganda machine no Westerner has any interest in Russian territory. No one is super excited to occupy Siberia or fish the "waters" of the Aral Sea.
Most western members did. Eastern ones, meanwhile, ramped it up very significantly. Which is the only reason Western countries could get away with it, really - NATO is supposed to feed the American defense industry.
> NATO only expanded east because of Russia's posturing
More like because of the bordering countries clamoured for protection, even when there was no threat whatsoever (since the Russian military was in utter disarray). In a way, they were right: the ones who didn't manage to escape Moscow's orbit back then (Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus stans...), are now enduring dictatorship or war. In another way, they fuelled the Russian paranoia that fed Putin's nationalism, eventually ensuring that the doomsday scenarios did, in fact, materialize.
> The most baffling part is literally no one wants to invade Russia.
It's not just about immediate military occupation. Gazprom is an important piece of Putin's kleptocratic powerbase, and Gazprom needs to be free of Ukrainian control of their pipelines. If NordStream2 can't happen, because the Germans have to obey their American lord-protectors, then Putin must establish an alternative to the South - which doesn't need to be entirely in Russian hands, but rather in a position where Russian troops can secure it in a matter of days if necessary. In my view this is the real endgame.
This, obviously, on top of putting the strategic Crimean ports in a safer position; because NATO might not want to invade Russia, but Erdogan's Turkish troops are not shy about "securing" stuff (any sanctions against them carving up Syria? Not that I'm aware of...).
Border disputes are par for the course when you're a state managing a nation and territory. These disputes come up when other concerns are dealt with. They're bargaining chips. Right now China and Russia need each other. Later maybe they fight over them or they resolve them peacefully.
For those interested in the details, Wikipedia lists 5 current disputes[0], almost entirely relating to maritime borders, with some uninhabited islands being the only land in dispute.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_areas_disputed_by_Cana...
This "national defense strategy" is just a made up tale, another episode of russian propaganda that keeps poisoning generations after generations.
It's how empires operate. It's not fair, but it is what it is. For an example of how this turned out when the shoe was on the other foot, look at Cuba. The world nearly ended in '63, because the American empire needed a 'buffer colony'.
It's been a lifetime since the revolution, communism as a world ideology has been dead for a generation, but Cuba's still paying for the consequences of flipping allegiances. (The western world, sans the United States has normalized relations with it a very long time ago - so it's not an ongoing ideological problem...)
That’s a descriptive opinion on the matter. Not a normative one.
If Russia did not get an ex-KGB absolute monarch traumatized by the fall of the Berlin wall, the country could've joined NATO by now. Pretending that this particular made up "national defense strategy" is the only one possible, is just caving in to the Putin's propaganda.
Even if Russia for some dumb reason chooses to be perpetually against the West even after the fall of communism, it does not mean that the West automatically becomes interested in invading Russia either. Even in this case the "national defense strategy" is just a cover-up for the unprovoked aggression.
Russia joining NATO in good faith would change it for sure but would not make it obsolete.
Who would that alliance be (ostensibly) protecting themselves from? China? Taking that kind of stance (EDIT: against China) would not be in Russia’s interest.
It's not a national defense strategy, it is a national security one. They need to control the paths for gas exports to Europe to maintain Europe's reliance on them for heat in the winter. It makes them powerful.
If you look at national strategies for nations and territories, even beyond the time the current state has ruled, for every major or minor power throughout history, you'll find similar strategies because the underlying realities remain the same.
You don't need military action to provoke. The West has been trying to incite regime change all over the region, Ukraine is a prime example.
No. Nations don't throw national resources away, especially in modern times. If they're spending money, their lives, political capital on this they're profiting from it in some way.
Russia has to control the black sea and they have to control territory all the way to the Dneiper river. If Ukraine realigns to Europe and NATO they have to at a minimum have control over that territory to have a defensible position. This has been true since the days of the Russian empire, and this is one of the historical reasons for a Russian ethnic majority east of it.
Putin doesn't care about defensible border with China. In fact they don't care about the Chinese ambitions in South Siberia at all. And those ambitions are much clearer than any idea that NATO or European countries might want to invade Russia.
Putin's only worry is avoiding the fate of Sadam and Qaddafi and for that, in his mind, he needs to keep waging wars around Russia (and support struggling dictators all over the world, but that's unrelated to this conflict).
The fact that he did it means that either he really believes that NATO is scheming on invading Russia proper, in which case he's just gone mad, or all this pseudo-historical pretext is just a bunch of crap he feeds the world to legitimize his personal quest for glory and give his worldwide supporters ("useful idiots" as they call them in KGB) a reason to let him off the hook for that.
So it should be easy for NATO to go on the offensive here and teach Russia a lesson? If that isn't true, then why would Russia need to invade a country to "make itself safer"?