Well, I won't speak about freedom and democracy because these things do not have strict definition (or any definition whatsoever). This allows a loophole when y

Well, I won't speak about freedom and democracy because these things do not have strict definition (or any definition whatsoever). This allows a loophole when you can blame any country of being "not free enough" and "not democratic enough" and bomb it under this pretext. There's no some universal ruler, like standard of meter, that allows to measure the level of freedom and democracy. There's just a bunch of dubious metrics that also could be manipulated any way you need. E.g., foreign media (mostly founded and sponsored by US) publish in Russia a flurry of messages that "Russia is suffering from unprecedented corruption" (which is not true). Then the same media conducts a poll how readers perceive level of corruption in Russia. Scared brainwashed readers report that their perceived level of corruption in Russia is very high. From these two lies CIA controlled media makes a "truthful" conclusion that corruption in Russia is high. There're ton of other examples. And Russia might be wanting to continue its expension of conquests to its former Soviet partners, so after expending in Ukraine and Georgia No, it's a known fact that Georgia attacked Russia on 8.8.8. We could take the whole Georgia easily for retaliation, but didn't. We don't need it. Just as we don't need Ukraine. We needed Crimea because it was our territory, our grandparents shed blood for it. And Ukraine wanted to give it to USA to build a naval military base. Would US react differently if Russia would start preparing to build a military base in Mexico, just on the border with US? We don't need former Soviet republics. It was a mistake to accept them in the USSR, but early communists were idealists. Take, for example, Georgia: it doesn't have natural resources, its population doesn't want to work. Or Baltic states, for that matter. They're just leeches that had the highest level of life in the USSR at the expense of Russian SFSR. Russians worked hard to build infrastructure and industry in those republics (that they've destroyed and sold for scrap for nothing in the first few years after USSR collapse - all of them - there's no any industry anymore), to feed them, to provide them with oil and gas from Russian oil deposits. It was a huge waste of labor and resources, because they always hated us and after USSR collapse started to blame us for all their problems. I hope we won't repeat this mistake again. I'd prefer USA and EU to feed hungry Georgia, Ukraine and Baltic states rather than us. Regarding hatred: there was never any plans in Russia to attack US. There was never any state (or other propaganda) that Americans or Europeans are bad people that need to be killed. This is a pretty clear contrast to what Europeans and Americans think about other nations. You consider yourselves a chosen nation and all others savages that must be controlled and even killed. E.g. open any western media, and you'll find lots of appeals to attack Russia and kill Russians. In social media this is even worse. You'd find tons of appeals to kill Russians on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit. And these aren't even moderated. You can right now open reddit/r/worldnews, and find such appeals under any news that mentions Russia. You won't find anything like this in Russian media. We do not hate other nations. We do not consider ourselves to be "special" and having right to kill others.