| > sure, but that is sadly how world politics works. if the US expands nato right to the border of russia then they retaliate. ukraine fought a war against their own citizens in the eastern half when they sympathized with opening up to russia - a majority there perceives themselves as russians. This is not some "nuanced view", but blatantly wrong Russian propaganda: 1. The notion of "the US expands NATO" is ridiculously wrong. In Central and Eastern Europe, getting into NATO is considered the holy grail of foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been regarded as the top goal in foreign policy (along with the EU membership), because nobody wants to return to being unfree prisoners under Russian rule in severely stagnating dictatorships, from which European nations broke free only 35 years ago. 2. I stress: Central and Eastern Europe passionately wants into the pact that would help to defend them in case of another Russian invasion. Sweden even abandoned its 200 years of neutrality and entered the pact. Trying to depict this as some kind of American initiative is plain wrong. 3. Existing members had refused to invite Ukraine into NATO in 2008 and the topic of Ukraine's entry into NATO was completely off the table by the time of Russian invasion in 2014. 4. There was no "war against their own citizens" in Eastern Ukraine. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the entire thing was a covert Russian special operation, directly under Russian military command. Their verdict is long and gives a really good overview. The entire war is about as complicated as the invasion of Poland and France. Just plain naked aggression by a totalitarian dictatorship that first crushed all internal opposition, then turned outwardly expansionist. History has seen many such examples. |