Russia-Ukraine Invasion Causes

Ukraine was not going to join NATO for the foreseeable future. Russia not only wants Ukraine to stay out of NATO but of the European Union. Putin's speeches make clear that he does not want Ukraine to be an independent country. NATO expansion upsets some Russians but also greatly raises the cost of Russia invading NATO members compared to a relatively unarmed country such as Ukraine that is outside military alliances.

You make a reasoned argument why Russia might want to invade Ukraine while ignoring Russia's actual actions. Russia keeps changing it's stated 'reasons', with Russian's themselves saying the silent part you ignore out loud. They say Ukraine is not a real country, Ukrainians are not a separate people from Russians, and that because Ukraine tried to go it's own way it must be folded back into mother Russia and along with Belarus create a new slavic union. Ukrainian is

Ukraine wasn't going to be accepted into NATO anyway. They asked. Weren't accepted. Ukraine knows this, Russia knows this, NATO countries know this. It's just Russian excuse for propaganda reasons.The real reason is that Russians consider Ukrainians "the same nation" and if Ukrainians entered EU or some sort of association with it, and got richer than Russians like Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Balts etc. - it would be very bad for Putin approval in Russia. Russians would s

Ukraine has more reason than most countries to want to be a part of NATO, given that Russia invaded it in 2014 and seized territory. This war, to the extent it was provoked by anything other than Putin's hubris, was because Ukraine wants to join the EU, not because it was going to try and join NATO. Ukraine wanting its fortunes to look more like Poland's and less like Russia's is not a crime punishable by invasion, no matter what apologists blaming NATO expansion think.In any c

There is Ukraine and there is Ukraine+NATO. In Russia's security interests, only the latter is worthy of war. Ukraine had a coup in 2014, installing an anti-Russian regime who then made overtures of joining with NATO (aka the US military cloaked in international "defensive" armor). This is why they responded in Crimea and now. This isn't happening in a vacuum.

His reason to invade Ukraine was that it was part of Russia back in the days, and not its own country. That could be true for NATO member countries.

Lots of different takes on this, but I don't think Putin is as imperialistic or "crazy" as he's made out to be. Much of the problem is that the US promised Ukraine (and Georgia) that they could become a NATO member. From Putin's point of view that's the US expanding their influence right up to Russian's doorstep. While the cold war is over, it's not like "the west" (broadly speaking) and Russia ever really become allies.In a perfect world Ukra

First, it is not WW3 but Russian aggression on Ukraine.Second, they had very clear reasons: Putin always considered Ukraine his property and when he realized he can lose it, he decided to use force. He elaborated on it in a longer piece[0] and in the Carlson show.https://web.archive.org/web/20220305153356/

This is incomplete. Ukraine was supposed to be a buffer between NATO and Russia. As soon as Western folks started talking about getting cozy with Ukraine, Putin saw the eventuality where US/joint bases would be on his border and he didn't want that. He would rather start a war with Ukraine than go toe-to-toe with the US and NATO.

The USA used Ukraine (and Georgia) in 2008 when it told NATO that it must tell putin that Ukraine was joining, despite no one else wanting it to. That's why all this is happening.Putin himself c. 2000 wanted russia to join NATO/EU -- and has found the USA's rejection and containment of russia post-USSR incomprehensible. When the USA insisted on neighboring states joining NATO, that's when Russia took this stance of NATO=Threat -- because, frankly, that was th