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Annexing Ukrainian lands and making them productive was never the primary Russian strategic goal. What they wanted to do was establish defensible strategic dept

by nradov 1y ago

Annexing Ukrainian lands and making them productive was never the primary Russian strategic goal. What they wanted to do was establish defensible strategic depth. There are no natural geographic borders (like mountain ranges or wide rivers) between NATO member states and Moscow so Russian leaders still fear a land invasion from Western Europe (which has happened a couple times before). If they controlled Ukraine then they could make an invasion by NATO much more difficult. I'm not trying to justify Russian aggression but from an amoral geopolitical perspective there was a certain logic to it.

tim333 1y ago
That never made sense to me for various reasons. Firstly no one in Ukraine or NATO had any thoughts of invading Russia. Even now after Russia launched its war, no one wants to invade Russia. Why invade some godforsaken place with the world's largest nuclear arsenal? Makes no sense. Second if they wanted to invade they could have gone from Estonia or Latvia which share a border with Russia and are fairly close to Moscow and St Petersburg. My take is the Russians regard Ukraine as Russian lands and Ukrainians as their property and felt the west was trying to steal it from them by promoting democracy and independence.
- nradov 1y ago
  I'm not claiming that it makes sense to a rational outside observer, I'm just pointing out part of the strategic calculus from the perspective of a paranoid Russian leader. They conceptualize the world in a fundamentally different way that's hard for westerners to intuitively comprehend. And obviously that wasn't the only factor, they thought they had multiple reasons for acting.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    Except Putin is not, and has absolutely never been paranoid of NATO invading Russia. He literally believed the west would barely react to this invasion. They didn't even take hundreds of billions of dollars of hard cash out of foreign accounts. Russia continues to pull defensive weapons like SAM systems from the NATO border to use them in Ukraine Because "NATO invasion" has always been bullshit. The strategic calculus was that Putin has spent a decade killing anyone who tells him something he doesn't want to hear, so a couple years ago he heard "We could take over all of Ukraine in 3 days and they would welcome us with open arms" and he believed it. Vladimir Putin genuinely believed that they could blitz Ukraine and be thanked for it. A reminder that for Putin to genuinely believe that Ukrainian people who the soviets killed and repressed quite significantly would choose to be Russian willingly, he must have believed that EuroMaidan was not genuine protest. Putin believes the CIA did it. Which is yet again another reason why the "Protection from NATO" argument is horse shit, because Putin does not believe that a country has to be in NATO for it to be used against Russia.
mopsi 1y ago
Let's assume for a moment that this is true. In 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, European militaries were in the process of unilateral disarmament. Military units were being disbanded, bases were being shut down, equipment like Leopard tanks was being sold to places as far away as Chile. The US removed its last permanent heavy equipment from Europe in 2013. The few countries that still had conscription were debating a move to much smaller professional armies. If a leader in Moscow had truly feared an invasion from the West, why would they have needed to do anything other than sit and wait for the disarmament trend to continue? Perhaps it was the other way around: the leader in Moscow saw all that and believed that no one would have the resources to stop him?
- iammjm 1y ago
  Exactly. The West did next to nothing when Russia invaded Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, Donbas and Lugansk... no wonder then that Russia kept taking if we kept giving. We should've acted sooner. We would've saved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives if we did.

by nradov 1y ago

tim333 1y ago

That never made sense to me for various reasons. Firstly no one in Ukraine or NATO had any thoughts of invading Russia. Even now after Russia launched its war, no one wants to invade Russia. Why invade some godforsaken place with the world's largest nuclear arsenal? Makes no sense. Second if they wanted to invade they could have gone from Estonia or Latvia which share a border with Russia and are fairly close to Moscow and St Petersburg. My take is the Russians regard Ukraine as Russian lands and Ukrainians as their property and felt the west was trying to steal it from them by promoting democracy and independence.

nradov 1y ago
I'm not claiming that it makes sense to a rational outside observer, I'm just pointing out part of the strategic calculus from the perspective of a paranoid Russian leader. They conceptualize the world in a fundamentally different way that's hard for westerners to intuitively comprehend. And obviously that wasn't the only factor, they thought they had multiple reasons for acting.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  Except Putin is not, and has absolutely never been paranoid of NATO invading Russia. He literally believed the west would barely react to this invasion. They didn't even take hundreds of billions of dollars of hard cash out of foreign accounts. Russia continues to pull defensive weapons like SAM systems from the NATO border to use them in Ukraine Because "NATO invasion" has always been bullshit. The strategic calculus was that Putin has spent a decade killing anyone who tells him something he doesn't want to hear, so a couple years ago he heard "We could take over all of Ukraine in 3 days and they would welcome us with open arms" and he believed it. Vladimir Putin genuinely believed that they could blitz Ukraine and be thanked for it. A reminder that for Putin to genuinely believe that Ukrainian people who the soviets killed and repressed quite significantly would choose to be Russian willingly, he must have believed that EuroMaidan was not genuine protest. Putin believes the CIA did it. Which is yet again another reason why the "Protection from NATO" argument is horse shit, because Putin does not believe that a country has to be in NATO for it to be used against Russia.

mopsi 1y ago

Let's assume for a moment that this is true. In 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, European militaries were in the process of unilateral disarmament. Military units were being disbanded, bases were being shut down, equipment like Leopard tanks was being sold to places as far away as Chile. The US removed its last permanent heavy equipment from Europe in 2013. The few countries that still had conscription were debating a move to much smaller professional armies. If a leader in Moscow had truly feared an invasion from the West, why would they have needed to do anything other than sit and wait for the disarmament trend to continue? Perhaps it was the other way around: the leader in Moscow saw all that and believed that no one would have the resources to stop him?

iammjm 1y ago
Exactly. The West did next to nothing when Russia invaded Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, Donbas and Lugansk... no wonder then that Russia kept taking if we kept giving. We should've acted sooner. We would've saved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives if we did.