I don’t know, those 500 nukes would sting a little. Maybe you’re right though. But anyway, European countries could build more if they need more deterrence. This is all fantasyland anyway, the US isn’t leaving NATO any more than it’s going to stop supporting Ukraine.
Comparing Cuba to Ukraine shows a lack of understanding why Cuba was a big deal at that time. First strike was still considered a possibilty and nukes in Cuba would give Russia that option. These days nuclear subs guarantee mutual destruction so nukes in Cuba would not get the response it got back then. Ukraine makes no difference either way when it comes to the nuclear balance between Russia and USA.
I thought the Czechs annexed Kaliningrad?
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The analogy isn’t even close to perfect but I’m talking about more than just the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the culmination of things. The US policy towards Cuba from 1958 onward was extremely aggressive and imo deranged.
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Yeah, I know you’re making that analogy, but it’s a terrible analogy. Not only was Uraine not joining NATO at the time Russia started biting off pieces of it, but even a hypothetical where Ukraine actually joins NATO poses zero additional risk to the country of Russia itself (other than removing one nation on the list of nations Russia could plausibly conquer). NATO already has nukes that can hit Moscow. NATO already shares a border with Russia (and now a much bigger one, which provoked zero Russian response, hmmmmmmmm 
)
The Cuban Missile Crisis was about an explicit threat to the US homeland (one that the US thought they could make to Russia but that they didn’t want made to them, yes). Cuba was already out of the US sphere of influence at that point, which pissed the US off, sure, but not to the same degree of either the Cuban Missile Crisis or to the degree of what Russia is doing now to Ukraine.
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It keeps getting lost but the precipitating crisis that kept triggering Russia wasn’t that the US was promising Ukraine that it could join NATO it was Ukraine wanting to move closer to Europe aka join the EU or some kind of trade deal and to move itself further from Russia by pushing Russia aligned oligarchs etc out of government and contracts.
NATO’s useful because a military alliance sounds more threatening to domestic and foreign audiences than invading a country because they want to become part of BMW’s supply chain.
It’s a bit of a moot point now. Ukraine as already burned though their Soviet and Russian weapons so going forward, if they’re going to have some independence, they’re going to have to use NATO weapons and therefore be closer to NATO than otherwise
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Lot of Russia propaganda in this thread, kind of worrisome.
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And maybe more that any of that, Ukraine becoming more and more capable militarily.
Welcome to the forums, Lib!
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Zelenskyy is a great leader. I saw this clip where he grabbed his own chair to sit down. It’s what real leadership looks like.
Imagine one of our presidents being in the same spot. It would be a shit show.
It wasn‘t even that, but the people protesting against the former president not signing a trade deal that had been brokered with the EU. The protests toppled the government and Russia decided to invade for the first time.
Ukrainians wanting to determine their own foreign policy has been at the heart of this since 2014.
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I don’t know what O’Bummer believes or what a “core interest” is, genuinely. I’d just prefer that Russia’s interest in Ukraine is not given any degree of legitimacy by the suggestion that its about Russia’s sincere security concerns, which it isn’t and never has been, or by fancy but desensitizing talk like spheres of influence, because it isn’t the 19th century.
I’ll use a talking point phrase, “Russia is a mafia state”. Its leader needs to flex his muscles to maintain order. Since he cannot provide anything appealing to former Soviet republics to make them want to join his economic union, he extorts and threatens them, and now with Ukraine he has resorted to invasion and a bit of light genocide.
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Except…that’s why Russia went to war. Because the Russian elite wants to dominate and control Ukraine, and they will never allow Ukraine to freely join the west. Acknowledging that simple truth doesn’t mean you have to accept that Russia was right to do so.
That’s fine, that’s a better starting point for understanding what’s going on than NATO encroachment.
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Except NATO encroachment directly ties into that. If Ukraine joins NATO then Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine are irrevocably blocked. So the Russians weren’t afraid of NATO like launching an invasion of Russia from Ukraine, they just knew that if Ukraine joined NATO then Ukraine would never be in their sphere of influence.
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The majority of voters in Ukraine wanted to embrace peace and stability at the cost of this Russian influence, rather than accept the bogus offer to somebody maybe be on the precipice of officially joining NATO, but then SOMEBODY went and started paying nazis to terrorize and kill people who felt this way, which coincidentally also gave Putin his marketing strategy for why invasion was necessary
We’re not disagreeing, I’ve said what you just said before. NATO encroachment isn’t a security concern like Ukraine being in NATO is going to make Russia more vulnerable to being attacked by NATO. It would have made next to no difference, as Finland joining NATO will make next to no difference to the security of Russia.
Also, Ukraine was never close to joining NATO at any time. People talked about it, but I believe the public polling showed most Ukrainians were fine with not being in NATO, but this is a hazy recollection.
It’s a little different because of the naval base in Crimea, but otherwise, sure. If NATO navies gets to base out of Crimea then that’s legitimately threatening to Russia. But that’s more of a pre-2014 concern. Once Russia takes over Crimea and the separatists break away in Donbas Ukraine is never joining NATO because NATO won’t take countries with active territorial disputes, for obvious reasons.
Sounds like Putin had a good thing going post 2014. Don’t know what you’ve got 'til it’s gone.
I’m not going to litigate this in detail, but ‘separatism’ in the Donbas was entirely a Russian led operation, it wasn’t an organic movement of people who didn’t agree with Maidan. In some places it was Russian financed January 6 type rabble taking over administration buildings, in others it was literally Russian special forces. And then all the ‘volunteers’ started crossing the border with miles long trains of military equipment.
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