I’ve read a lot about Russia; cold war & current events this is the way I understand it.
Germany has a strong pacifist movement these days for obvious reasons.
During the lead up to the Iraq war in 2003, they along with Russia & France managed to block a UN resolution on war.
I remember the US were saying at the time "we plan to ignore Russia, forgive Germany & punish France" (don’t think they did punish France in the end)
Russia doesn’t want to invade Ukraine, it’s the size of the ex-planet pluto, has all the resources it needs and doesn’t need more land and people to pay for.
Many Russians understand the reason why the USSR was poor & Russia now rich is it doesn’t now have to financially support poorer regions and people, although it re-took back Crimea in 2014 that it gave Ukraine in the 1950`s when it was all one country the USSR, however there is a majority of Russian citizens living there as it’s been Russian since the 18th century
Not saying what Russia did was right but its clear the majority of those in Crimea are ethnic Russian & unsurprisingly prefer to be part of Russia which is why you never saw any resistance movements or demos since, that you saw in the USSR in the early 90`s breakaway states like The Baltic states and Armenia that have strong ethnic differences for example.
I believe NATO and US begrudgingly accepts this and would probably pressure Ukraine to drop Crimea as well to allow it to join NATO as a country without border disputes.
Russia does want to stop Ukraine from joining NATO however to prevent a US missile base next door (think Cuban missile crisis), which is why Russia militarily supports a small Ukrainian territory of resistance called the Donbass in E Ukraine.
NATO has a clause that states countries that have a border dispute are unable to join so as long as this small part of Ukraine holds out Ukraine can’t join NATO.
So, the US wants the Ukraine to recapture the Donbass area to allow it to join NATO which is why it is sending it arms.
On the other side Russia is sending arms to these rebels that it shares a border with and can easily militarily intervene to push back the Ukraine army should they overwhelm these rebels (see map link).
So, Russia will never let the donbass fall for this reason and there is no weapons NATO can give them that will beat the military support the Russian rebels have since they are next door and the Russian army will intervene should the rebels be overwhelmed.
Although I don’t support Putin or think he`s a nice guy I do sympathise with Russia`s view of not wanting US missiles pointed at them next door just as the people of Florida didn’t want Russian missiles pointed at them from Cuba in the 60`s.
Sometimes you need to hear other countries point of view to get a balanced perspective, although we are at a stalemate, the following map of the area shows the areas i mentioned & the where things currently stand.
The whole potential conflict is around this NATO joining clause.
https://liveuamap.com/
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
- George Bernie Shaw
28 Jan 2022, 4:19 pm
