Finland purchased lots of military hardware from the Soviet Union. I'm sure Ukraine would have been willing to sign a deal that enabled/required them to buy lots of military hardware from Russia. That wasn't the deal on the table.
Austria, unlike Finland or Ukraine, has and had a much lower fear of a Russian invasion.
>Austria, unlike Finland or Ukraine, has and had a much lower fear of a Russian invasion.
Not in 1945, that is for sure. As an ally of the Nazis, Austria was probably shocked and delighted that they weren't invaded in 1945. So, I'm going to assume your reply pertains to the later decades of the Cold War.
But let's recap your argument. You're saying that even though appeasing Russia (by not joining NATO) might have been the right move for Austria during the later decades of the Cold War, Austria's experience is not relevant to Ukraine's situation because Ukraine has a higher fear of a Russian invasion.
It seems to me that is backwards. It seems to me that it is states like for example Mexico or India that Russia has little strategic interest in and that are too far away for Russia to be able to attack that can ignore Russian demands, and that the closer a country is to Russia, and the more Russia perceives that country to be a threat to Russia if the country were to choose to enter into a military alliance with one of Russia's enemies, the more seriously the country should consider acceding to Russian demands not to enter into such alliances.
Finland also built up a massive army to make any further invasion attempts as costly as possible, and with Helsinki Accords, got Russians to agree not to violently change borders in Europe, which they adhered to until Putin chose to invade Ukraine. That changed the calculus for Finland and now Finland is in NATO.
Finland is a very poor example, because for over half a century they did exactly what you recommend, and then re-evaluated and abandoned their strategy in a month when Putin invaded Ukraine.
>Finland is a very poor example, because for over half a century they did exactly what you recommend, and then re-evaluated and abandoned their strategy in a month when Putin invaded Ukraine.
Finland stopped appeasing Russia after the strategic situation had fundamentally changed, and if Ukraine had decided to appease Russia in 2022, they could've waited (in peace) for a similar change.
Specifically, the change was that Russia became weaker and lost direct control over territories like the Baltic states and particularly Ukraine that it cares about a lot more than it cares about Finland, so obviously Russia is going to try to use its dimished resources to regain control over Ukraine and the Baltics before they start caring as much about Finland as they did earlier.
>Austria was never part of Russia's historical borders.
And from that you conclude what? I don't see how that supports your point.