Russia's whole propaganda machine is predicated on having Ukraine as integral part of Russia since they base their whole value system on promoting the view that Russia is continuation of Kievan Rus which is modern day Ukraine.
Russia is also considers itself (for a quite some hundreds of years) a successor to Byzantine Empire. That does not mean that they want, would or should take any land in that direction.
Ukraine is special not because Kiev has to be in Russia, but because a lot of the current Ukrainian land was for, again, some hundreds years Russian and have almost no sovereign history. That makes it easy to play by all sorts of powers and Government is really not the main one there. Just look at Alaska it never gets same attention. Or North Kazakhstan. Same would be with Ukraine in coming 50-100 years if they would be able to hold the country together.
I dont watch news much. But that doesn't stops me from getting Ukraine from all sorts of angles for a long time (you have to justify Crimea).
I dont get much about NK from anyone but some ultra-right aligned personalities (but i am also getting stuff about Alaska from them, so there is that).
There is no independent ultra-right it's just another face of the same ruling group. The things they declare are coordinated by Kremlin. The "crazy" talk about Ukraine that started even prior to 2004 by "ultra-right" leaders was just 1st phase of prep. I would strongly caution against dismissing their msg. because they are voiced by ultra-right.
> There is no independent ultra-right it's just another face of the same ruling group.
Cant agree. Also this is a slippery slope that could apply to western countries as well and we dont want to go there.
> The "crazy" talk about Ukraine that started even prior to 2004 by "ultra-right" leaders was just 1st phase of prep.
Again, Ukraine problematic is objective. Alaska and NK is not. Not from todays Russia perspective, not from population perspective, not even from historical perspective. You didnt need ultra-right to talk about Ukraine and many legitimate politicians spoke about that for a long time. If anything moving towards Iran and eating up Caucasus nations is making much more sense than messing with NK, Baltics, Sweden or whoever else is trying to justify their actions using Russia as a threat.
Whats wrong with RT in general (besides funding) and this article in particular?
> It would be nice for Russia to have a swath from Crimea to Dontesk up through Latvia, just look at a map.
Why take this land? It does nothing strategically, has population that you need to subsidise, etc. Crimea allows Black Sea control. Kaliningrad effectively makes Baltic inner sea for Russia and if there ever would be any baltic action you would see that, not many (if any) ships would be able to enter.
When Russia occupied Crimea, Ukraine pulled out all support for the region's infrastructure. (Electricity, etc.) Quite naturally, Russia had to foot the bill to replace it.
The only way to get around that is to seize the entire country.
You cant just occupy country w/o sanctions, export/import chains breaking, you need to rebuild what would be inevitably destroyed during the invasion, etc.
The Baltics and Finland were both part of the Russian Empire; the Baltics were part of the USSR, and Stalin tried and failed to retake Finland. That's probably cause enough, if you're Putin.