Russia has few natural boundaries. It isn’t surrounded by oceans (as we are) or separated from its neighbors by daunting mountain ranges or rivers that are hard to cross. It’s largely prairie in all directions. And it has been invaded by practically all of its neighbors at one time or another, in some cases within living memory.
Those factors have created a sort of cultural paranoia.
I’m not justifying that trait; just explaining it.
That seems to be difficult for many people to understand, particularly Americans.
Curiously, many of Russia’s neighbors feel the same way.
It’s steppe from central Hungary almost to Vladivostok. Every country along that stretch has been invaded multiply times. The Huns were East Asians, and the Mongols ruled much of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Near East for decades.
The paranoia is real for all those countries, and it has a basis in history. But the important point is that those countries today set foreign, military, and domestic policy based on that paranoia. So the consequences are real.
By the way, once the referenda are done, and the oblasts become Russia, they will be defended as Russian territory. Putin’s implied threat to use nuclear weapons to defend them against attacks in NOT addressed to Ukraine. Russia thinks it is fighting NATO, and the threat is addressed to NATO. The nukes would be used on the US, UK, France, Germany, Poland, et a. Medvedev today made that explicit. Russia will take the fight to the people running it.
The real danger here is that Western leaders continue to ignore the public statements of the Russian leaders. They think the threats are made to Ukraine.
To that would add Russia has never been liberal democracy, The Russian Orthodox Church has always been subservient to the State, and on the whole, Russians have a great tolerance to misery
I think its rather easy to understand that they are paranoid. Just read what they say. I dont thin that is the question. Are they allowed to invade and subjugate other sovereign countries when they wish is response to their paranoia, which if we are honest is often delusional.
Steve
They didn’t invade other countries over quite a protracted period so, clearly, the notion that their invasion of Ukraine was inevitable is, to say the least, flawed. We had a choice back in the 1990s. We chose badly.
To preempt what I suspect will be your response to that, it wasn’t the Russians that made Ukraine poor. It was the Ukrainians.
And the Belarusians who made themselves poor? And the other stan countries that made themselves poor? And its just a coincidence that the countries that left the Russian sphere and joined NATO/EU are largely doing better? And just a coincidence that Russia didnt want Ukraine to leave their economic sphere?
Lets see. Afghanistan the 80s. First Chechen mid 90s, second about 2000. Georgia 2008. Crimea 2014. Ukraine 2022. What did I miss?
Steve