I see that mistake being made by a lot of people in the West. Apparently they can only think in such superficial materialistic and commercial terms.
But this war is much much bigger than that.
Look at the map, preferably a topographic one.
One of the most critical points of Russian territory is the one immediately to the east of Ukraine — you cut that off and you have severed their access to the Black Sean, the Caucasus, and the Caspian and you have a wide open lane for attack towards Siberia south of the Urals.
This is what the Germans tried to do in 1942 and it’s the reason a million people died at Stalingrad.
When Ukraine (and Belarus) was part of the USSR, that provided a 1500-km buffer for any such attack.
And again, that played a crucial role in the war — the German plan was to secure everything west of the Urals by the end of 1941. Didn’t work out because it turned out that vast distances matter a lot even for mechanized warfare.
Also, after the war the border was actually anchored at the Carpathian mountains (it’s probably one reason Stalin wanted those western regions so bad) and wasn’t only an open plane anymore, plus there were the additional buffers of the other Eastern Bloc countries in between the USSR and NATO.
But what happens if you give a potential invader a 1500 km head start with modern equipment?
And that is only if we consider traditional land-based warfare.
But we live in a world of cruise missiles, and it is 5 minutes from one to fly from Kharkov to Moscow, if you flood the airspace with such missiles, even the sophisticated Russian air defenses will not be able to stop them all. So the decapitation strike becomes very hard to defend against.
This is why Putin was talking about how “they have created security risks we cannot accept”.
On top of that, one has to consider that the Russians do see themselves, Belarusians and Ukrainians as part of the same larger nation, not as separate entities. And the Ukrainians in particular are a very large component of that larger Russian nation — about a quarter of it.
To have that turned militantly against you is a gigantic historic defeat and simply cannot be allowed.
Gas pipelines are a very minor consideration in that much grander military and historical context.
This isn’t about pipelines and gas.
I see that mistake being made by a lot of people in the West. Apparently they can only think in such superficial materialistic and commercial terms.
But this war is much much bigger than that.
Look at the map, preferably a topographic one.
One of the most critical points of Russian territory is the one immediately to the east of Ukraine — you cut that off and you have severed their access to the Black Sean, the Caucasus, and the Caspian and you have a wide open lane for attack towards Siberia south of the Urals.
This is what the Germans tried to do in 1942 and it’s the reason a million people died at Stalingrad.
When Ukraine (and Belarus) was part of the USSR, that provided a 1500-km buffer for any such attack.
And again, that played a crucial role in the war — the German plan was to secure everything west of the Urals by the end of 1941. Didn’t work out because it turned out that vast distances matter a lot even for mechanized warfare.
Also, after the war the border was actually anchored at the Carpathian mountains (it’s probably one reason Stalin wanted those western regions so bad) and wasn’t only an open plane anymore, plus there were the additional buffers of the other Eastern Bloc countries in between the USSR and NATO.
But what happens if you give a potential invader a 1500 km head start with modern equipment?
And that is only if we consider traditional land-based warfare.
But we live in a world of cruise missiles, and it is 5 minutes from one to fly from Kharkov to Moscow, if you flood the airspace with such missiles, even the sophisticated Russian air defenses will not be able to stop them all. So the decapitation strike becomes very hard to defend against.
This is why Putin was talking about how “they have created security risks we cannot accept”.
On top of that, one has to consider that the Russians do see themselves, Belarusians and Ukrainians as part of the same larger nation, not as separate entities. And the Ukrainians in particular are a very large component of that larger Russian nation — about a quarter of it.
To have that turned militantly against you is a gigantic historic defeat and simply cannot be allowed.
Gas pipelines are a very minor consideration in that much grander military and historical context.