Ukraine is an independent country and can decide who they want to ally with, clearly it's not Russia.

He got pissed off when Ukrainians elected a leader that was not a puppet of Russia. Now he is exacting revenge because he doesn't have a tacit Russian territory like with Belarus any more.

When Finland and Sweden decide they need the defensive advantages of NATO is he going to invade Scandinavia too? Should they be force to be "permanently neutral" as well?

Russia literally signed Ukrainians independence in 1991, although they didn't have much room to despute that.

Ukrainians wanted deeper ties with Europe in 2014 and now they are literally fighting for it.

NATO explicitly mentioned that no countries are allowed that have border disputes, that's why Russia started a gray zone war immediately after in 2014.

And now they are in full war mode, trying to force their will on a country that wants to be a democracy with the 2nd democratically elected president.

Biden wasn't even elected president in 2014 and Yanukovych ( who got overthrown) was literally a member of the Russian communist party, born in Russia. And not at all democratically elected as you are suggesting.

That is all known history.

The Maidan movement might have had public support, but behind the scenes EU and US actors were definitely jockeying to choose who to support. There are documents and even intercepts showing that. And after the world stopped caring, the new regime turned out to be not particularly less corrupt than the previous one - hence Ukrainians voting in complete outsiders like Klitschko (a boxer) and Zelenskiy (a tv comedian), who in turn sold out very quickly too to various interests. Zelenksiy is balls-out pro-NATO, but without this war he risked being thrown out, after his offshore funds were found in one of the various PanamaPapers-like leaks. He managed to lose pretty much all political capital and support he had in a matter of months, and his Nato obsession was seen as a bit humiliating really.

> NATO explicitly mentioned that no countries are allowed that have border disputes, that's why Russia started a gray zone war immediately after in 2014.

That has more to do with those regions being largely Russophone, and the Ukrainian government being too weak to regain control over them. If that was the only obstacle to join the Alliance, don't you think Zelenskiy or his predecessors would have just renounced them? Surely that's a price worth paying for a permanent security upgrade for the rest of the country.

No, the reality is that even the alliance never really wanted Ukraine to join. There are already enough members to contain Russia militarily if needs be. Same goes for the EU, which is already pretty big with 27 members and stalling pretty much all requests for further accession (not just Ukraine but Serbia and others too). But dangling carrots in front of people is how you make them do your bidding, so such requests are never formally rejected, just stalled forever.

> Ukrainians wanted deeper ties with Europe

Putin likely doesn't care about that, he cares about the leverage Ukrainians have over the precious Gazprom product that helps him stay in power.

One of the reasons that Putin now picked a war, was that joining NATO/EU was now anchored in the Ukrainian law - https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-amends-constitution-to-cem... . Occupying those areas would immediately halt any possability to enter the NATO, which is what Putin wanted to prevent.

Are you sure those areas are still as Russophone as you think? As far as i'm aware, it dropped after the gray zone invasion, eg. https://news.gallup.com/poll/180110/ukrainian-approval-russi...

By coïnsidence, the occupied territories were also nearby the Black Sea. Which was very important for Russia's naval fleet.

I do think that you are mistaking the importance of Ukraine for Russia (otherwise they wouldn't have gone to war). They gave Ukraine their autonomy, which they already couldn't deny fyi, in the expectation that they wouldn't go away from Russia. Which was at the time a reasonable expection ( puppet governement + many Russia/Ukraine relatives on both sides). I wouldn't underestimate the will to fix those "historic regrets" for a dictator.

Either way, Russia is already (partially) moving it's attention to Asian gas exports instead of Europe. So I'm not convinced that keeping Ukraine ( and going to war for it) would make much sense on a long term plan, if it's gas related.

Nordstream II was already outside of Ukraine influence and now it's probably totally broken.

Edit: The POV of Turkey might be aligned with what i think:

https://warontherocks.com/2022/02/what-russias-new-reality-m...

> Sanctions against Russia wouldn’t work. They only postpone problems. It is better to listen to other side and understand their strategic concerns. Russia feels threatened by NATO. Putin wants to redraw borders and renew strategic alliances 30 years after the USSR’s collapse.

That's your point of view. In practice, a proxy war can be beneficial for a nation-state. Obviously it won't benefit the proxy-state's own citizenry, but hey, they are not your voters! Look at the actual effects: the world is now economically bombing Russia, Biden was weak and now gets to look tough, and if you try to take a nuanced stance you'll be booed from the room.

> How do you explain that?

I might be wrong but IMHO the point really isn't NATO membership, but dropping American objections to NordStream2. Everything else was just stuff thrown on the table as a negotiable chip.

I don't think this holds up to scrutiny for a few reasons. Ukraine was not invited to join NATO, Zelensky's government fearing the escalation of Russia's incursions into the East started the process of asking for admission last June. Russian units have been operating in the East for years, and they took Crimea. If you read Putin's speech from early this week he laid out a revanchist case for recapturing old Soviet/Russian Imperial territory. He even laid claim to the whole of Ukraine, failing to note that the western portion only became part of the USSR because of WWII and had previously been part of other political entities. He's been carving up neighbors for years, so it's no wonder that the neighboring state might want to join NATO.

Wouldn't it be more similar if the Cuban missile crisis had taken place in Quebec or something? Or would that still have been better tactically and geographically better for D.C., than a NATO Ukraine is for Moscow? Terrain looks a lot easier there.

realistically China+Russia is that threat to the West today

It was built to provide collective regional security, in large part by binding the Western powers, who have frequently had disputes and divisions progress to war among themselves, together in an alliance wherein that would not occur. The USSR was a major immediate concern at the time NATO was formed, but regional security concerns did not evaporate when the USSR did.

And probably reinforced the idea of a EU defense system as well. The EU can't rely on US military support indefinitely, particularly since that support may vanish at the whim of the American voters.

Every country in Russia’s position would do the same, or have already. You already mentioned Cuba, for China it would be Hong Kong.

In case of US, it would be a too long list of attacks of sovereignty whether through war or subversion.

You realize that US was incredibly close to nuke Cuba? Lucky for both US and Cuba, Cuba is an island so blockade was possible.

Now imagine Cuba having land border and is positioned on coast between DC and NYC.

Russia has land borders with several NATO states, so I don't see how the Cuba comparison is relevant.