[everdrive]

According to Peter Zeihan, it's not so much that Russia needs more _land_ but that its current land is difficult to defend militarily given the facts of its geography. I'm not necessarily defending Zeihan's view, but simply claiming that there is some analysis which suggests there's a strategic benefit for Russia here. (or perhaps there would have been back when they thought the war would be easy) And let's also not forget the importance of Crimea with regard to Black Sea shipping. It's also the case the the "Kievan Rus" has quite a bit of historical and cultural importance to some in Russia.

Now to be clear I'm completely opposed to the war in Ukraine, and I'm quite happy to see Russia getting pushed back. My hope would be that Ukraine takes back all of its remaining territory. But, I think there are at least some justifications that could have made sense for someone who thought the war would be easy, and who did not care about the human cost either side would bear.

[mopsi]

Zeihan is a strange guy who seems to take a lot of his information from online discourse, which is a poor substitute for first-hand knowledge. The ground truth is very blunt: Russia has not bothered to install even a chain-link fence along its European border. Some sections have a sand strip to detect crossings, others not even that, most of it looks like this: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/misc/FIRU/DSCN237... Mushroomers and other foragers often get lost and end up walking into Russia (and vice versa) without even realizing it. This is such a regular occurrence that it receives only warning or a small fine, and a few sentences in local newspapers.

A counterexample comes from post-2022 Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland: every single one of them is digging anti-tank trenches along the border with Russia, installing everything from surveillance systems to reinforced bunkers and pillboxes, preparing minefields to be laid and bridges to be blown up. Things have gone so far that some of them are discussing dismantling railway lines connecting with Russia to prevent them from being used by invading forces.

No such preparations can be seen on the Russian side of the border, because in the post-Cold War world, everyone recognizes that an attack from Europe is a delusional fantasy. There's no will and no means for that.

[Jblx2]

>Zeihan

Why is he even a thing? A guy wrote a couple of books with some failed predictions? Only thing I can think of is that he mostly tells people what they want to hear, with some minor bit of contrarianism to have the semblance of telling truth to power. Add in self-promotion, and I guess that is the recipe for success (or at least being internet quotable)?

[pllbnk]

I think it's simpler than that and isn't talked much. Ukraine has been on a direct path to join European Union. Russians and Ukrainians have had significant ties - parts of families living in one country, parts in another, marriages, shared language, given that all Ukrainians know Russian and a lot of them have even spoken Russian at home at least until the war broke out.

Putin couldn't let Ukrainians join the EU, start getting all the EU fund money and actually started living like Europeans. Russian population would see that at a large scale and start asking questions. He couldn't get back the influence over the country diplomatically so he resorted to terror.

Edit: I also wanted to add that this was the reason Putin and other Russian propagandists have been calling Ukrainians the brotherly nation (to show them how they care about them), the nazis (to show that their government is harmful) and that Ukraine doesn't even exist as a country (to show that they should all be the same people under the same borders).

[rchaud]

Not trying to defend Russia in the least, but isn't their fear more about Ukrainian accession into NATO rather than the possibility of joining the EU?

EU membership isn't the golden ticket it used to be. Russia basically had an inside man in there for years with the Orban administration in Hungary. Member nations like Greece, Malta and Bulgaria also seem to have experienced more brain drain to the higher income countries in the bloc than they have in economic and industrial development.

[pllbnk]

My guess is as good as anyone's. But I think NATO was used as an excuse for war because it's a military (although defense) alliance. It would be impossible to justify war for country joining the EU.

As for the golden ticket metaphor, I agree, but when the country is so economically and institutionally behind than the rest of the EU, this would still benefit them a lot. All Eastern countries experienced big emigration but a lot of the citizens previously having emigrated are now returning.