I can’t quite wrap my head around this. There are other countries that joined NATO that are right on Russia’s doorstep, so what made Ukraine different from their perspective?
I can’t quite wrap my head around this. There are other countries that joined NATO that are right on Russia’s doorstep, so what made Ukraine different from their perspective?
Probably because if one were to invade Russia (and how Russia was actually invaded in the past), it would be through Ukraine. Attacking Russia through Finland is a logistical nightmare, you just couldn’t supply a big offensive force through there. The Baltic states are a tiny countries, easily dealt with; can’t put an army there that’s large enough not to be overrun by Russia.
Ukraine is large, flat, the borderline is massive, the population of Ukraine is substantial. Turning Ukraine into bulwark against Russia, allied with NATO, is massively worse than all the other border countries. You can see how much trouble Russia has in this war dealing with just the Ukrainian army, imagine if there was a multi-million NATO force fighting there.
polling shows that Europeans aren’t willing to die in Ukraine
To the last Ukrainian!