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See also Anne Applebaum: > Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail. > These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine. * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukra... * https://archive.fo/bmQmO It would also explain the Russian operations with regards to Brexit and the 2016 US election: the more chaos the West has, the better it is for Russia. See also funding of more extreme political parties in the EU, with a focus on the far-right in recent years: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–European_Union_relation... |
Also, calling Ukraine a democracy is a bit of a stretch. They shut down 3 tv stations critical of the government, and imprisoned a political rival. I am sure there are people here that would love to shutdown RT, but we don't do that in a democracy.
[0] 2020: Russian Military Exercises Near Ukraine. 100 to 120 thousand troops. No WW3, no threat of nukes. https://empr.media/news/conflict-zone/russian-military-exerc...
earlier:
2016 https://www.vox.com/2016/9/1/12729426/russia-troops-ukraine-...
2017 https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2017/09/13/whats-putin-up...
2018 https://archive.is/0gqL0
2019 https://radiolemberg.com/en/ua-articles/ua-allarticles/almos...