> The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is what forced Russia to act to possibly prevent a NATO membership

It didn't force Russia to do anything.

If you consider Ukraine becoming a NATO member a threat to Russian security that has to be prevented at all costs, then you are forced to act if your opposition is ignored. Besides this there are essentially only two options - Ukraine does not become a NATO member or you convince Russia that a Ukrainian NATO membership is not a threat to its security.

EDIT: As a thought experiment entertain the idea of a partnership between Mexico and China where in exchange for economic support China gets a few military bases in northern Mexico, just a few thousand soldiers and tanks and maybe an airfield here or there. Take into account the recent US reaction in response to a partnership between the Solomon Islands and China [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/23/us-warns-solom...

This explanation doesn't make much sense. If Ukraine maybe joining NATO in an unspecified future is such a big threat to Russia, then surely Finland joining it right now is an even bigger threat. Not to mention that Poland and the Baltic states already are NATO members.

Russia's security is guaranteed by nukes. Security definitely wasn't the reason why Russia has invaded Ukraine.

If security is guaranteed by nukes, why does the US threaten the Salomon Island? Placing missile defense systems close to the launch sites gives you the possibility to intercept them early in the boost phase when they are still slow. Having assets close to enemy borders in general gives you shorter reaction times. This is about tipping the scale somewhat in your favor, not ensuring your victory.

I am not qualified to judge the situation with Finnland, but not all neighbors are necessarily equal. Things like geography, for example, might play a role and Finnland in, Ukraine out might be more desirable than Ukraine in, Finnland out.

Russia is busy with Ukraine so can't deal with Finland however they have been talking tough and posturing.

NATO members are NATO members, attacking them after they've joined NATO an orginisation basically created to fight Russia would mean you go to war with all NATO members.

Russia's preference methodogly of defence is creating distance. With Ukraine, NATO would have been extremely close to Moscow. Finland is further away but they're still not happy about it.

NATO expanding into that region was well known to be something that would threaten Russia, since it was founded to fight Russia, to the point Joe Biden said decades ago[1], that Russia expanding into that region would cause conflicts.

[1] https://multipolarista.com/2022/03/08/biden-nato-expansion-r...

For me, what allowed this to happen is that NATO were slow walking Ukraine. This created the uneasy possibility that they could join but never really giving the signal that they can join. They asked for a Membership Action Plan in 2020. In 2022 they still weren't given one and got invaded because of NATO. It takes two to tango as they say and those two are Russia and NATO and the Ukrianan people are the ones who suffer the most.

It was the Bucharest summit 2008 that started paving the way for Ukraine and Georgia to become NATO members. Georgia was immediately attacked, Ukraine under Yanukovych suspended its membership ambitions itself until 2014. When they resumed their membership ambitions, Crimea and the east Ukraine where the response of Russia and this prevented a NATO membership because you can not be in an active conflict as far as I know. This then gave Russia time to prepare the invasion in order to try to prevent a NATO membership forcefully.

I think you have the ordering of 2014 backwards. It wasn't until December that Ukraine resumed their plans for joining NATO and was arguably a response to Russian activity in Donbas and Crimea.

This is indeed crucial and when I first researched this after the invasion started, I arrived at Russia reacting. I can however no longer tell how I arrived at this conclusion. If I find some time, I will look into this again, as it is pretty important for my understanding and explanation of the conflict. Ad hoc I am not sure if this would completely break my point of view.

Wow. Sincere, major props for considering that you could be wrong, on an issue that you clearly have strong opinions on.

Well, I am only interested in understanding the world, I don't care who is the good and who is the bad guy. And if I am wrong, I want to know it.

Let me know if you find something definitive. Figuring out this timeline shouldn't be as hard as it has been for me when you mentioned something contrary to my recollection...

You are of course correct that Ukraine officially gave up the non-alignment in late December 2014. What I have to check is whether in late 2013 or early 2014 there were any indications that Ukraine might reverse course.

The Maidan revolution was certainly one such sign; it was about joining the EU, not NATO, but the two are somewhat correlated.

Sure but I do not think that I would have seen Maidan in general as something that warranted more or less immediate action from Russia. Either I really got this wrong or I must have come across something more relevant.

I think it is fair to assume that in general the USA prefers Ukraine in NATO over a neutral Ukraine and that over one oriented towards Russia. In NATO there are at least some countries that preferred Ukraine remaining neutral. Even if everyone always says that it is a sovereign decision that does not preclude them from at least having preferences. But there is at least some evidence for outside influence to push Ukraine into a certain direction which goes beyond just having a preference.

I did a bit of reading yesterday but I have not yet found anything I consider strong enough to support my Russia reacted point of view. At least at this specific point in time, in general I still have no reason to doubt that a NATO membership was the desired outcome. So currently I really tend towards I got this wrong and I am mostly held back only because I looked into all this in quite some detail after the invasion started and that seems like a mistake I should not have made.

The post you responded to omits a few important segments that are crucial for understaning actions and reactions. Let's start with:

- 1990 - 2000: whether Ukraine had a sovereign right to join military blocs in the first place and how Zelensky's rhetoric on the matter contributed to Moscow's decision making. My past comments regarding the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32299159

- 2011-2014: pre-cursory events to the successful armed coup against the legitimate sitting president in early 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31763329

- late 2013 - early 2014: U.S. officals' unofficial position that they themselves summarized as "Fuck the EU". Media coverage: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/07/eu-us-di... and the full version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YctPO-k7ZlM

- ~8 years of what could be best characterised as a civil war between two sides of the same country backed by two different world powers. A period of forming of Azov Battalion out of nationalistic elements of the divided society (long twitter thread): https://twitter.com/camaradabruno/status/1499781846682505220

- 2021: UK's making a show of support for Ukraine in Black Sea near Crimea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Black_Sea_incident

- June 2021: Boris Johnson says HMS Defender’s deployment ‘wholly appropriate’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFWM7s2I52g

- Late November 2021: red lines are officially outlined, Crimea status is non-negotiable: https://www.reuters.com/markets/stocks/putin-warns-russia-wi...

- December 2021 Putin asks (demands) for concrete legal guarantees that would allow to prevent a conflict from escalating into a hot phase: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-...

- Early 2022: “Do you realize that if Ukraine joins NATO and decides to take Crimea back through military means, the European countries will automatically get drawn into a military conflict with Russia?” Putin said. “Of course, NATO’s united potential and that of Russia are incomparable.”: https://thebulletin.org/2022/02/putin-says-ukraine-membershi...

IMO, everything post 2014 is of little importance.

By that point, Ukraine no longer trusted that Russia would respect its sovereignty and Russia no longer trusted that U Ukraine would remain neutral with NATO.

“Blah blah… fOrCeD …blah blah”

There was no compulsion involved in Russia invading their neighbors.

How should Russia have prevented Ukraine from joining NATO alternatively?

How about by making Ukraine not feel threatened by Russia, so that it didn't feel that it needed to join NATO for its own protection?

Which threat do you have in mind in particular?

I don't have one in particular in mind. I have in mind a whole pattern, going back at least as far as the invasion of Georgia in (IIRC) 2008. That said - in actions, not just words - that Russia feels free to invade neighbors if it doesn't like their policies.

Then came Russia's statements at the time of the color revolution. (No, I don't recall specific statements - that was eight or nine years ago.)

Then came the invasion of the "little green men". Russia said it was an internal thing, that Russia was not involved. Ukraine knows better.

Was that not enough for Ukraine, as early as 2013, to be looking for alliances to help their defense?

But for every move they made, Russia felt threatened by NATO. And so Russia responded by threatening Ukraine even more (mostly verbally, until 2022). But the bigger the threats that Russia uttered, the more Ukraine sought to strengthen ties to the west. This was now a positive feedback loop. It doesn't matter if one side was "right", it doesn't matter who made the first move, Russia's reactions were driving Ukraine more firmly into the camp of the west.

Since the invasion, Russia's comments have been jaw-dropping. "Ukraine has no independent existence." They threatened Finland for joining NATO. (Why do they think Finland might see the need to join NATO, after decades of non-alignment?) They threatened Poland for being a transit point for weapons flowing into Ukraine. They talked about re-creating the USSR or the Russian Empire or some big thing from the past that had a bigger land footprint. They talked about already being at war with NATO. Do they think that people don't listen to this? That they don't react? That the reaction is going to be to bow down to Russia's diktat? People (not just Ukraine) are scrambling, either toward Russia or away. Belarus is scrambling toward (Russia having kept Lukashenka in power might have something to do with that). Uzbekistan and maybe Kazakhstan are moving toward Russia. Everyone else is scrambling away, trying to find allies big enough to deter Russia from attacking them.

(Now, in fairness, since the invasion Russia has been running wartime propaganda, so of course their rhetoric has hardened. That doesn't convince their neighbors that Russia wants to live with them in peace, though.)

So, yeah. It's not just one threat. It's the whole pattern of Russia's words and actions over the last decade or two.

The invasion of Georgia followed the Bucharest summit 2008 so in my opinion this can be understood as a reaction against Georgia seeking NATO membership. Ukraine decided not to persue a NATO membership until 2014. From my initial research on the topic I arrived at Russia reacting in 2014 as Ukraine started to reverse course but other commenters have pointed out that I got the order of events wrong. They are certainly right with the official reversal with regard to seeking NATO membership which happened only in late December but I have to look into this again as I do not remember why I arrived at Russia reacting.

But I do not want to get stuck in the details of the actual events now because as you point out there is a more fundamental issue independent of the actual events. And I almost completely agree with the way you describe it as an unstable situation with positive feedback. Not sure if you wanted to say that this feedback loop formed in 2014, but if, then I would disagree. This cycle existed essentially since the end of the Soviet Union - Ukraine moves towards NATO, threats or actions in opposition, more incentive to seek NATO membership. Rinse and repeat. The specific events of course change but it is always the same cycle.

It doesn't matter if one side was "right", it doesn't matter who made the first move, Russia's reactions were driving Ukraine more firmly into the camp of the west.

With the first part I agree, but the second one is onesided. This is only one of the links in the cycle but in the same way any move towards NATO forces Russia to up their threats or even take action. And in that link it is not only the actions of Ukraine that matter but also outside actions. For example the USA wanting to support specific political groups in Ukraine in 2014 is also something that fuels the cycle as it may also move Ukraine closer to a NATO membership.

Ignoring everything after the war started because we are talking about how it started, it seems to me that everything you mentioned is related to the NATO issue, isn't it? I did some reading on the history of Ukraine Russia relations and I would say all things considered they got along pretty okay besides the NATO membership issue. Crimea is probably the biggest friction point but even there the longterm leases look like an acceptable compromise.

And let me return once more to the cycle which should have been broken long ago and must be broken at some point to achieve stability. Where can it be broken? Convince Russia that NATO in Ukraine is not a threat. Not going to happen any time soon just as a Chinese presence in Mexico would not be acceptable to the USA. A long time ago directly after the end of the Cold War this might have been possible with Russia itself becoming a NATO member. And obviously Ukraine remaining neutral or at most having only a special membership in NATO like Norway with no foreign assets on its territory.

Both have only become harder with the war and beyond that you either need radical changes like disappearing countries or become really creative. I think someone actually pointed some non-obviouse direction out to me but unfortunately I do not remember.

> Ignoring everything after the war started because we are talking about how it started, it seems to me that everything you mentioned is related to the NATO issue, isn't it?

No, I don't think so. Russia intervened in Belarus to keep Lukashenka (sp) in power, against the will of the people. I don't think the people were asking for Belarus to join NATO, though. So I think that Russia has more "red lines" than NATO. A color revolution and/or a real democracy anywhere in the former USSR is a red line, at least while Putin is in power. (Because Putin very deeply fears a color revolution in Russia.)

And I think that's the deeper point. These aren't Russia's red lines; they're Putin's. And Putin may develop other things that become "red lines", because the bottom line is "anything that Putin feels threatened by". That's not a reasonable expectation to place on other nations. Ukraine and Belarus are not Putin's playthings, nor his colonies. "Don't do anything Putin doesn't like" is not something that independent nations have to play along with.

Why should Russia have prevented a sovereign nation from doing anything? Is Ukraine not a sovereign nation? Should the US prevent Mexico from joining into a membership scheme with other nations?

Look at the US reaction towards the Solomon Islands [1] earlier this year. And we are not talking about memberships in random international organizations, we are talking about placing military assets close to rival borders. Do you think the USA would tolerate Chinese bases, tanks and airplanes in northern Mexico? What happened when Cuba asked for Soviet ICBMs as deterent against the USA trying to overthrow their government?

Sovereignty does not mean you can do whatever you want. Why do the USA and Israel try to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, are they not a sovereign state? Why invade Afghanistan, is hosting terrorists not something sovereign state can do if they want? You can of course maintain that sovereignty grants you the right to do whatever you want inside your territory, but then you also have to admit that not only the evil Russians are violating rights left and right.