Something really anachronistic about this war. Like if Genghis Khan showed up and demanded “give me all your horses” and then you’re like “dude I don’t have any horses” and he kills you
Its about Putin not coming to terms with the fact that soviets lost the cold war. And of course the breakaway regions would want to get closer to the west.
A better way to think about this is that dissolution of Soviet Union is not a 1991 event, but a continual process of the soviet empire falling apart to this day. Ending of history, not an «end of history».
It looks like we’re starting a new pickup game in the school yard and they’re picking teams (outside the actual fighting and shelling and destruction and death on the ground, of course)
It's because NATO and the EU would fix Ukraine, which is pretty damn broken behind all the cute choir singers and Easter eggs. You can't let that happen to a border/buffer state as an autocrat. Brain drain, probable internal unrest, slide into irrelevance if not overthrow.