Which is kinda pointless in this day and age of aerial warfare, and it's also really unfair on those who live in that "buffer zone". That means they're basically just a throwaway crumple zone to Russia ready to be sacrificed. Who wants to be that? And if they do manage to take over Ukraine they still don't have a buffer zone because they'll be bordering with Poland and Romania.

Also, Russia has actually gained a huge border directly with NATO as a direct result of this war. It's really backfired in that regard. Finland wouldn't have joined NATO if Russia hadn't shown how dangerous they can be. They were perfectly happy with the status quo until this.

Such a lost opportunity. It would have been much cheaper to dissuade them of that idea before this war. The Crimea stunt they pulled should have been the turning point, but instead we get almost no reaction. Now it's going to cost a lot of money and lives to throw them out. :-/

Russia is vast and has a land area that would allow it to use its own land as a buffer if it chose to. Very other countries can do that.

Launching a genocidal war for such goal is as laughable as all the other reasons that get stated.

This "buffer zone" demand is much older than 30+ years. Putin wants another Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to invade his neighbors, to be called 'Putin the Conqueror'. Everything we see are his ambitions to rewrite history. He won't resort to nukes because then there is a risk of no one reading the history of the new glorious Russian empire by Putin the Conqueror, and that's against his life goals.