Boris Yeltsin wanted it to be a long-term goal of Russia to join NATO - a measure supported by the United States (source: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/wor

Boris Yeltsin wanted it to be a long-term goal of Russia to join NATO - a measure supported by the United States (source: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yeltsin-says-russia-seeks-to-join-nato.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yel... or https://archive.ph/31hkF https://archive.ph/31hkF) And they started down that road earnestly in the 1990s. But it required extensive military and certain Democratic reforms Russia didn't want to commit to so they abandoned it. And that's totally fine: nobody is required to join NATO. Ultimately, since the early 90s, Russia helped form the CSTO which serves a similar function. > recent Ukrainian pol's have done everything they can to marginalize the people and their Russian cultures in these regions. The current Ukrainian president is a native Russian speaker and was quite popular in Russia. They have spent the last 8 years dealing with a Russian-instigated (and supported) civil war with the so-called LPR and DPR. Is the southern United States oppressed because the Union didn't allow it to secede? That certainly was the argument people used to justify segregation! Anyway, the stated justification for this war is not NATO expansion but "denazification"