While yes, Putin very much wants his old USSR back, it seems he's doing this in response to potentially having more NATO missiles on his borders.
He's basically been saying "fuck around and find out" since 2008 when we said Ukraine would have the option of joining NATO.
In the UK there's been much discussion of Russia's role in Brexit. i.e. Aaron Banks, the man who funded the Leave.EU campaign, was aledgidly backed by Russian "business partners".
The Boris Johnson's Conservative government have said in the last 2 hours that they're going to keep £1.93 of Russian linked donations they've received since 2019.
You can draw your own conclusions.
So in 2008 when he attacked Georgia back then Polish president Lech told such thing: "first Georgia, then Ukraine then baltic states, then maybe our country". Maybe he read it right and in 2010 it was assassination like some suspect and not "an accident".
IMO lots of EU parties are in Russian pocket and this is nothing good.
This is dark scenario but if they got deal with China, we are all fucked. They will make mess in EU so they can focus on East Asia/Middle East. US is overleveraged and once oil != $ is done.
The Kremlin apologists in American politics are really disturbing.
Putin's objective is to re-integrate Ukraine into the 'Russian Empire', he's taking the 500-year view and so 'Nord Stream 2' is irrelevant.
NATO acquiescence to his demands would have just changed maybe the nature of Putins' actions, or not but he would have continued.
The big issue is obviously now Taiwan.
In hindsight, I actually kind of blame the Germans a lot for this. Germany has been very successfully sucking in business and talent from the rest of Europe, building their economy while completely avoiding the 'responsibility' that comes along with that power. Partly military, but definitely geostrategic issues of security.
Their, and European energy dependence on Europe is a giant lever that Russia has - we are talking about nulling 'Nord Stream 2' - it means nothing in the big picture. Laughably, nobody is even talking about Nord Stream 1 - i.e. the pipeline already in place.
If Merkel were to have re-invigorated in Nuclear investment with a strong commitment to both reducing dependence on Russia and ironically CO2 at the same time, and, made serious improvements to military capabilities with a keen eye to the kinds of activities necessary to actually support fledgeling Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine, and possibly better more serious coordination with UK, France, Sweden etc. then we may not be in this situation.
Ukraine may have regiments of UK, French and Germany units 'training' there at any given time, with support from the US, which really changes the equation a lot.
Putin pretty much telegraphed all of his moves years in advanced. Nobody did anything about it. The US could have done more, but this is more directly a European issue and there's a serious lack of leadership over there as well.
The complete lack of historical awareness is impressive.
In the meantime, here are some more actual facts:
German/European dependence on Russian Energy [1]
'Foreign Policy' articulation of the problem, with specific reference to Germany, and their intransigence on supporting sanctions directly as a result of their energy policy [2]
Germany Energy Mix, 1990-2020 [3] which decisively illustrates that if Germany had continued it's Nuclear program - without even expanding it - it could be entirely independent of Russian (and other) imports.
Germany's continued disregard TO NATO agreements with respect to military spending [4] and some of the political causes.
All the while [5] Germany grows into EU's hegemon (due to favourable Euro policy, weak France, absent UK et. al.)
Here is exactly the argument that I am making in academic terms [6]
"There is no disputing Germany’s dominant economic role within the eurozone (EZ) and the broader European Union (EU). Its GDP represented 29 percent of total EZ GDP in 2016 and, as of 2015, it was the top intra-EU trade partner for 18 out of 28 countries ... for reasons it is largely responsible for, the growth of exports to the ROW has been growing faster. The German trade surplus, however, is larger with the ROW than it is with other EU nations.
Economic leadership in the world or in a region, however, entails responsibilities, especially in a world system of monetary production economies that compete with each other according to political and economic interests."
And it goes on to make the fairly obvious case.
[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/02/how-eu...
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/03/germany-energy-sanction...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#/medi...
[4] https://warontherocks.com/2018/07/the-real-roots-of-germanys...
[5] https://www.e-ir.info/2021/08/23/europes-hegemon-the-nature-...
Yes. The trigger for current events was the possibility of closer cooperation with the EU, not anything NATO-related. Putin can't have a successful alternative to his regime. He can write off Finns and Lithuanians as being of different culture, but if their ethnic brothers Ukrainians built a successful country with wages multiple times higher than in Russia, then it would fatally undermine Putin's legitimacy. He doesn't want to end up like Saddam or Gaddafi.
Hypothetically, wouldn't the US would have serious concerns if Mexico decides to join a Chinese alliance.
(I am not justifying a war, just wondering what could have been done on both sides to prevent it)
Yes, countries prefer weak neighbors. A powerful alliance on your border is a potential threat (or deterrent to expansion).
No in the sense that the US only has 90k troops in NATO countries, or about 10% of Russia’s standing military. So it’s not like troops are messing at their border or enough to threaten an invasion. It’s very much a deterrent.
Also no in that the US, Russia and China are nuclear powers. The US should have little concern of a Chinese ground assault from Mexico as it could trigger a large scale nuclear war, defeating the purpose of the invasion. Similarly with Russia, their nuke arsenal means that no one will consider attacking them or invading their borders.
Also … While the “Cuban” part of the crisis can be viewed as instigated by the Soviets, it would be awfully foolish to ignore the fact that they were reacting to the US/NATO moves to deploy missile forces in Europe… by accepting the request from Cuba for nuclear weapons to defend their country from America, which they only asked for after the failed invasion effort in the Bay of Pigs.
It’s never just as simple as “they started it”…
Cuba was a Soviet client state, and installing missiles there was clearly an offensive act.
Reality isn't easily divided into good guys and bad guys...
No. NATO is a defensive alliance. Easter European countries are in NATO specifically to protect against the kind of aggression you're seeing in Ukraine now.
Russia used to regularly invade neighbors: Poland 1939, Romania, Baltic countries, Finland 1940, Everywhere 1944, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968. None have been invaded since joining NATO.
NATO expansion is removing threats, not creating them.
If US attacked and annexed several Central American nations over last two decades, except the ones who are part of pre-existing "defense against the US" alliance, Mexico wanting to be in it would be perfectly rational and normal.
NATO is not organised well enough to conduct offensive operations on that scale, moreover, there is no state on earth, including US and China that could take parts of Russia and hold for long.
But that aside, the very real political and economic situation in the world would make it unfathomable. There's basically no 'strategy game' where the West would have the intent let alone ability to truly invaded Russia.
The 'NATO' issue is almost entirely a canard, a very easy argument that Putin uses to cause confusion, allow other supporters (i.e. China) to make empty arguments at the UN etc.
Putin is literally using the 'UN Charter' to as cover to legitimise his invasion of Ukraine.
Putin has used the term 'genocide' constantly in the last decade to refer to what is happening in Donbass even though this is obviously not the case.
Putin's implication that 'he's invading Ukraine to stop fascist country, to protect Russian speakers and to 'keep peace'' is basically rubbish, as are his arguments with respect to NATO.
There's a grain of truth in it, of course there is violence in Donbas, but amplifying the issue is the very obvious ruse.
Their playbook is wide open - we know their doctrine, we know how they use misinformation, we know how they argue, we know their intentions. It looks pretty bad on us to allow any of this to happen.
FYI - Western Media has been making a lot of money arguing in public lately, and it's appalling what we're seeing on some of the news outlets, and some of the statements by US public officials. Some people are 'taking a stake' in the situation as they would any other news item, i.e. 'jockeying for position' on the issue. It's disgusting.
The only reason there is violence in Donbas is because of the previous undeclared Russian invasion of that territory as well as fomenting unrest there and elsewhere in Ukraine. Not to mention shooting down a commercial airliner.
It's about as truthful as Hitler arguing there is violence in the West of Poland in October 1939.
I think the real problem is that NATO is a threat to Putin's imperialistic dreams.
If Ukraine had joined NATO then, Putin wouldn't have invaded. That's the solution. Not to stay away from NATO.
If Romania wouldn't have joined NATO, it would now be invaded together with Ukraine.
No, it's definitely not that. Taking Putin's word at face value is completely irrational.
His actions and other policy objectives have made it clear that he and the Russian State do not view Ukraine as a legit country and have literally been invading it for the last decade wile the West twiddled their thumbs.
Taking Ukraine is a primary objective of the Russian State under Putin - that's the more 'simple' thing to understand.
Anything he says on the news is a 'game'. It's not even really a complicated game, we have all of their books, their doctrine, we know exactly how they think it's just a matter of applying it.
In hindsight it will be hard for anyone to fathom how we didn't see all of this coming. We're literally watching it happen in real-time, from a very well established playbook.
FYI have a read [1]
This is Putin's grand thesis. He basically narrates a history in which Ukraine is just part of Russia.
This has nothing to do with NATO.
He’s always advocated for a return to USSR borders.