WilliamSmith wrote: ↑April 1st, 2022, 11:53 am
It is a nationalist (more or less) Russia defending itself against subversion and invasion of Russia after Putin spent decades warning Ukrainians and other surrounding states over and over again not to surround Russia with US/NATO missile....
You need only a map and see that Russia is so large and EU area is so small compared to it that any talk about subversion and invasion of Russia is nothing but empty meaningless talk.
Russia is not only the largest country in this world, but also has to longest borders of this world, about 57000 km totally and out of it about 20.00 km are land borders.
Borders to EU are not even 4000 km, and some of them are not NATO members, for example Finland, Sweden is located near, but without land borders and also not NATO member.
Ukraine is far away to become a NATO or even EU member in future, as many requirements, especially economically, are not fulfilled at all.
However Western countries are now openly assisting Ukraine to defend itself after it was invaded by Russia.
To claim Russia is 'defending itself' against invasion from EU in Ukraine is totally ricidulous. Ukraine is a poor country, income is less than half of those in Russia per person. Ukraine is more than 30 times smaller than Russia. It's the opposite, Ukraine is defending itself against Russia as these 40 million Ukrainian people do not want to live occupied under Russian rule.
The Russian government this time totally miscalculated its political situation. Russia was clearly threatening recently Finland and Sweden with invasion, should they ever dare to apply for NATO membership. - This cannot work well, as in return both countries start now to reconsider their neutral position.
https://www.politico.eu/article/finland ... ne-russia/
A survey by the Finnish broadcasting company Yle found that 53 percent of Finns support their country joining NATO. This figure goes up to 66 percent if neighboring Sweden were also to join NATO. This marks a drastic shift in public attitudes — in the previous poll in 2017, only 19 percent of Finns supported NATO membership.
In Sweden now also a discussion is going on about NATO
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ap ... 022-03-08/
STOCKHOLM, March 8 (Reuters) - Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Tuesday rejected opposition calls to consider joining NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying an application now would destabilize security in Europe.
Sweden has not been in a war since 1814 and has built its foreign policy on non-participation in military alliances, but it has forged ever closer ties to NATO in recent years as tensions with Russia in the Baltic region have risen.
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A poll on Friday by Demoskop and commissioned by Aftonbladet newspaper showed 51% of Swedes were in favour of NATO membership, up from 42% in January. People against joining fell to 27% from 37%. It's the first time such a poll has shown a majority in favour
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Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderates, called on the government to begin broad domestic political discussions about NATO membership, a debate that has already started in Finland.