However to call them aggressors is a total perversion of the word aggression. Their posture is backs-to-the-wall defensive in relation to Western powers.
They did a terrible job even before that, with "The Great Game" and all that. In fact, it was so bad even their own people had had enough.
Just because they're afraid of having their "backs-to-the-wall" doesn't mean their doctrine is legitimate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Baltic_state...
Did you missed how Russia invaded those both countries? It's an aggressor.
Russia annexed Crimea.
America invaded Iraq.
Iraq lost 5% of its population during the American invasion.
How many Americans were in Iraq, who were under direct threat of violence from a fascist group involved in a coup d'etat?
Russia hasn't reached America's level of evil, destructive, criminal warfare, that is for sure. The claim that America was surgical and careful in its invasion(s) is specious at best, but really just downright evil. Literally millions of people are still suffering from the effects of America's callous invasion.
4 million innocent people have lost their lives under America's war machine. How many Ukraine soldiers did Russia take during the annexation?
Not even comparable levels of magnitude, no matter how finely tuned your moral relativism chops are ..
There is no question that the irregular forces in Ukraine received military equipment from Germany, US and other sources. There is videos documenting that. Part of the anti-russian forces were literal neo-nazis, complete with insignia used during world war 2. The Vice magazine war reporting (Russian Roulette in Ukraine) documents both of these statements.
(Yemen.)
No, only its nearby neighbors. Maybe ask Ukrainians or Georgians how they feel about the Russian sphere of influence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force,_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War#South_Russia...
This is how Russia behaves to us, I think my position is understandable. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/russia-opens-c...
The US has spent a generation pushing first the Soviets, then Russia, back into a very tightly confined sphere of influence. There is no obvious limit to the amount of harm the US has been wishing on Russian interests.
It is a remarkably cycloptic perspective call such fears 'paranoid' or to paint Russia as some sort of aggressor. Russia isn't the one with military bases set up in North America. Russia isn't cutting people off from the global trade network or invading every other country in Western Asia. They are a relatively neutral country on the world stage in terms of aggressive foreign posture, even accounting for this article.