MOD ALERT PLEASER STAY FOCUSED ON THE THREAD TOPIC AND DISCUSS IT IN A CIVIL WAY. THOSE WHO CONTINUE TO ATTACK AND DERAIL WILL BE BANNED FROM POSTING ON THE THREAD. https://www.businessinsider.com/10-maps-that-explain-russias-strategy-2016-1 Maps can help explain a lot more than talk. Maps are chock full of nuance we don't get in print. I tend to think of Russia like a USA, moderate climate inmost places, good roads mostly, half of your neighbors are good. Russia is close to being landlocked. Their main population is in the west. They are more arctic than mild. I tend to they want to live in the warm and cozy west without westerners. That's a big ask. Especially when every few decades someone cops an attitude and wipes out 20 million of its population.
Had to stop reading at the headline "Russia is almost landlocked", considering Russia has the 4th largest coastline in the world.
Yes, the Russians have long oppressed the Ukrainians... like since medieval times long. Ukraine had been a sort of border country that multiple empires wanted. It is culturally distinct from any of them, and so it is only logical that in modern times it would be its own country. It lacked the power to be independent when imperialism was okay. Russia wants to bring back imperialism.
No, I didn't at the time of my post. I did after YOUR post. I also realized that the OP is misleading in its premise which is why the other poster made the point about the length of Russia's coastline.
MOD ALERT PLEASER STAY FOCUSED ON THE THREAD TOPIC AND DISCUSS IT IN A CIVIL WAY. THOSE WHO CONTINUE TO ATTACK AND DERAIL WILL BE BANNED FROM POSTING ON THE THREAD.
Yes, we know that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. But before that, for hundreds of years, they were Ukraine. Find a map that predates 1917.
I'm not picking a side, just showing what I think is one of Russia's justifications. Remember that Russia had a fundamental change with its revolution in 1917.
Yeah, let's do Catherine the Great founded Odesa, fyi. https://commons.princeton.edu/mg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MG-Expansion_of_Russia_1689_-_1796.jpg
Nice map, thanks! Yes, Katherine the Great very much wanted a sea port that wasn't ice-locked half the year. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...ded-crimea-and-put-rest-world-edge-180949969/ "Catherine presented herself to the world as an “Enlightened” autocrat who did not govern as a despot but as a monarch guided by the rule of law and the welfare of her subjects. Yet at the same time, she annexed much of what is now the Ukraine through wars with the Ottoman Empire and the partition of Poland and brutally supressed the largest peasant rebellion in Russian history." She was every bit as brutal as Putin is today in regards to Ukraine. Russia does not have any right to claim even a tiny portion of Ukraine. Sorry, but there is no justification.
This land grab will end up Russia's undoing. Thought they'd be satisfied being the largest country in the world, but no, gotta have that little bit more.
