[luuurker]

Care to explain why countries are willing to give up some of the control over their own military and risk being dragged to other wars just to join NATO? And what caused Finland and Sweden join after 2022 even though historically they were fairly neutral?

I don't know man. What's to the east that makes these countries beg to join? Is it a peaceful country? Or one that sees "russians" in need of protection everywhere, one where the president goes on TV and gives history lessons that reduces these countries russian land, one that makes regular threats about invasion or nuking their cities, etc?

The US has a lot of influence, but that has limits. The good thing for them is that with Russia behaving like this, they don't need to move a finger to have eastern Europe on their side.

[medo-bear]

Why do you speak for the whole Eastern Europe? Many people in slavic countries in Eastern europe feel sorry for Ukranians because their government is so stupid. The only people that predominantly egg them on to war are non Slavic countries like Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, etc. Maybe these countries take pleasure when slavs kill eachother. After all they did welcome Nazis with open arms not that long ago. And another unspoken reason these non Slavic countries fear Russia so much is because they have very significant number of Russians living umongst them, whom they often refuse to recognise as citizens

[luuurker]

Neither you nor me speak for "the whole Eastern Europe" or the "slavic people".

I'll ask again: why did the countries in the east tried to join NATO? Why join if there's no threat?

It's not Estonia or Lithuania making regular threats about nuking a Russian city or taking the Russia in 2 or 3 days. They may hate Russia (why did you left the part where they were invaded and their language and culture was repressed for years?), but they're not going to start a war against a huge nuclear country. They will, for obvious reasons, try to have the means to make any invasion very costly though.

You can play dumb all you want, but it doesn't take a genius to understand that Russia's behaviour and their lack of respect for other countries' borders drives those countries towards NATO. NATO was losing its purpose until Putin decided to start invading countries... but of course you can't see this as Russia can't do anything bad and it's all the US fault.

Have you heard the saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? Try to understand it, maybe then you also understand why countries that were attacked then sided with Nazis and anything that opposed the country that invaded them.

Russians living in eastern Europe is a well known thing, something that the Soviet Union did many times in different places, so it's not "unspoken" at all. In any case, this is not rocket science: Mexico doesn't get to invade the US because there are many mexicans there. The US doesn't get to invade Berlin because there are many americans there. Ang guess what... Russia doesn't have any right to anything outside their borders. Why is it so hard for you and Russians to understand something so simple?

There's only one country in Europe talking of changing their borders and waging war. It's Russia. No "buts" or "ifs". Russia started a war, full stop. The fanboys just need to grow a pair and stop making up excuses for them.

[medo-bear]

The US set the precedent of changing borders with Kosovo. Russia just used skmething from their playbook. Russian government even said of US recognition of Kosovo that they are opening pandora's box.

[aguaviva]

The US set the precedent of changing borders with Kosovo.

The US did not attempt to annex Kosovo and admit it as a 51st state. I'm also not aware of any pronouncements from an American presidents in regard to "the historical unity of American and Kosovan peoples".

No analogy here.