Quote (ferdia @ 30 Oct 2024 23:07)
Our disagreement started when I rejected the notion that NATO missiles on its border are a red line for Russia. I did not reject the notion that Ukrainian NATO membership might be a red line for Russia. (And I have, in the past, pointed out that such a stance would be logically inconsistent with the relaxed fashion in which Russia handles NATO troops on its border in the Baltics and Finland.)
The sources you provided, while an interesting read, do nothing to support your "no NATO missiles on our border" claim.
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The first article imho misses a crucial point when it tries to pinpoint why Russia didn't react to Ukraine's NATO ambitions in 2008, but then started a military conflict in 2014: Russia was simply weaker in 2008 than it was 6 years later.
After the traumatic 90s, Russia had to pull itself out of a really fucking deep hole during the 00s. They made good progress, but it took the whole decade and then some. By 2014, they were back on track.
Also, oil and gas prices were kinda high during the first half of 2014. Russia's annexation of Crimea and the break-away of DPR and LPR took place right before the North American shale oil and fracking boom took off and sent global oil and gas prices tumbling down during the second half of 2014. Which would, in turn, also provide a possible explanation why Russia didn't escalate any further back then (say with a full-scale invasion by 2015 or so) and was seemingly satisfied with the frozen conflict/low intensity war in the Donbass.
Seriously: we all know that Russian strength is more or less directly proportional to its oil and gas revenue. Well, the price for a barrel of Urals crude oil collapsed from $109 in June 2014 to $47 in January 2015, then bottomed out at $36 in January 2016.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/urals-oilMy personal pet theory is that Russia already planned to invade Ukraine back then, but got blindsided by the fracking boom taking all of the economic wind out of their sails. Then, covid delayed things even further.