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Nobody tried to install nuclear missiles in Ukraine and there are plenty of European countries that haven't joined NATO despite much closer ties to the west tha

Nobody tried to install nuclear missiles in Ukraine and there are plenty of European countries that haven't joined NATO despite much closer ties to the west than Ukraine like Sweden and Finland. I think Ukrainians wouldn't even have considered that their ethnic brothers would attack them (and most ordinary Russians are probably still in denial about it) before Donbas in 2014 and last week which makes their joining NATO an absurdity, you don't need protection when you don't fear someone. Your neighbours joining NATO can be perfectly avoided if you stop invading them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas

danbruc 5y ago
And what happened now that Finnland and Sweden pondered joining NATO? Putin warned them. Ukraine wanted to join NATO and Putin has always said that this is unacceptable but NATO did not back down. And you can easily say that there would be no big NATO presence or even nuclear missiles in Ukraine, but you have to convince Putin that this is and will remain true. But NATO already promised to not expand eastwards after the end of the cold war and then did it anyway, so it is not surprising that there is a lack of trust on the Russian side. All Russian attacks in Georgia and Ukraine followed the Bucharest declaration from April 2008 which states that Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO members. Under Yanukovych Ukraine decided to not go ahead with the NATO membership and remain unaligned. After that the situation escalated again in 2014 as Ukraine started again to seek NATO membership.