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And that was just the start. On top of that Russia wanted eastern NATO members to effectively be treated as second class NATO members by the rest of NATO, and to also have veto powers over what NATO does there. Effectively it would have been like a conditional surrender treaty by NATO, except...

True. Still, doesn't change the fact that NATO membership is a decision to be made purely between the current NATO and the prospective NATO member. Not exactly, its more like going for nukes. It does make a country safe once it happens, but there is a very dangerous "now or never" moment when...

But a SSGN or any other warship can go to Baltics' coast. And a B-2 can fly over them. Or last but not least, if we are playing nuclear skullduggery, and USA has secretly ressurected Tomahawk GLCM, could put them on a truck, just like in the Cold War, put the trucks in the hold of a ro-ro...

But that would be idiotic. Not because it would be provocative, but because if they wanted to hide a bunch of nuclear tipped Tomahawks (which were retired by the way), there are so many better ways to do this than hiding 24 of them in a public facility "camouflaged" by ridiculously expensive...

Does it? The west specifically offered that possibility in the distraction negotiations. Look where that went... No, Russia is committed to whine about any permanent NATO, and doubly so US installations, in its "sphere of influence", regardless of their purpose, proportionally to their value and...

>Pull That is a very inaccurate term to use. Look up the votes on NATO membership in all ex-communist countries who joined. Look up the polls about that too. There was no need for any pulling. The kind of "but poor Russia is just scared about its security, it will leave you alone if you have no...

I think this is the core sentence: Minsk, in the implementation and interpretation used by Russia was always a camouflage net. What was hidden in it? All the propositions given are just different ways to describe the same thing - a puppet state Ukraine. They can call it federalization, they can...

That's less a case of "gave", and more that original Manhattan Project was a joint program between them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_contribution_to_the_Manhattan_Project Naturally, even as the cooperation ended after the war, Britain ended up with a bunch of own citizens with related...

That's a greater issue with the western countries sticking to the idea of nuclear non-proliferation... Who gave nukes to North Korea, and who did the west give nukes to in completely fair and deserved retaliation for it?

Theoretically, yes. Which is probably why Russia is floating up Luka's economy and keeping a lot of the soviet era economic organization, with dominance of state enterprises and such. If they switched to EU economically, it would be very painful at least for few years. Has dodgy governance...

Which shows what Russia wants now from its neighbors - satellite states, not buffer states. Both have major roadblocks to EU, just different ones. In Turkey, its the grand cultural problem, plus dodgy governance matters and ME baggage with Syria and Kurds at minimum. In Ukraine, its also dodgy...

So yeah, more restricted buffer state than in the Cold War, which says something in itself... Functionally, that would be closer to what Soviet satellite states were during Cold War. And those weren't rich. I think the map you've posted may be one reason. There is also an interesting parallel...

Then we are talking of a more strict definition of "buffer state" than it was in the bloody 60's. All 3 countries you mentioned are in the EU, all 3 joining EFTA amid Cold War. Note that the pro-western Ukrainians taking part in color revolutions weren't rushing to join NATO, the whole quarrel...

The problem here is that Ukraine sees no money in being a buffer state, while considering what started the Maidan protests, Russia has an idea on what constitutes a buffer state which in no way resembles a neutral state - its more along the lines of "we de facto control it through at least some...

Considering how elections work in that part of the world, to describe them as legitimate is quite ambitious. See: Belarus. https://www.voanews.com/a/yanukovych-victory-in-ukraine-still-a-question-mark-84716632/173408.html And then there was this...

Excuse me for not assuming the highest moral standards on the part of former KGB officers... So i hear you like facts: https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/attachments/041019_smith_presentation.pdf That's a pretty good image of what the region saw regarding...

And what would even be an adult conversation? Russia is Russia, and its naive to think that outside of being commies, the natural state of Russia is to be some kind of poorer Switzerland, or some other kind of ideal country of the western many isolationists or pacifists. Reminder that before...

I didn't say Assad of all people didn't want it, its his ass that it was saving after all, i said Russians weren't asked if they want to support such adventure with blood and taxes. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/05/06/fewer-than-half-of-russians-support-syria-campaign-poll-says-a65494...

Its not like the Russian establishment asked before the Libya and Syria deployments either. Close, distant, doesn't matter. Yes, yes, i know that worldview. The problem with it is, that the Russian side doesn't really ask the Ukrainian side whether they want to be considered part of the same...

And that's the thing, Russia is kinda like USA in regard to wars. Even in USA there is only limited concern among the establishment elites about what wars the general population wants or not. In Russia, the KGB elite in power cares about the people's concerns in such matters even less than the...