Honestly not a bad take compared to many others I’ve seen regarding this shit show. Russia doesn’t really give a shit about Nazism in Ukraine and is using this war to secure it’s strategic assets around the region that had been in under Russian/Soviet control for centuries before the breakup of the USSR. 2014’s coup threatened any sort of cooperation in Crimea and hence Russia proceeded to annex it.
Or NATO was going to install nuclear launch sites next door to Russia. But if you gloss over that fact then yes, Russia bad.
Analogy: Mexico lets a US adversary install nuclear launch sites just south of the USA border. How do we think that would go? Mexico would be the pawn.
What’s happening in Ukraine is a result of USA/EU actions, and Ukraine not being smart enough to pick up a history book and see how the USA uses poor countries as fodder. They must be shoveling mass money and cocaine at Zelensky. It’s all literally a case of “well well, the consequences of our actions.” The USA just wants resources and nuclear launch sites.
Russia doesn’t really give a shit about Nazism in Ukraine
they certainly do. But America has trouble relating because we were all cushy and safe over here while Russia was ratfucked by Nazi Germany. Russians still know the songs about the Great Patriotic War.
they don’t launch missiles from dedicated launch sites or missile silos in the ground anymore, they use stealth aircraft or fighter jets to carry the missiles for hypothetical first strike scenarios. airbases that close to russia could let them attack the capital before they could meaningfully retaliate. rando military officers promoted via emergency aren’t going to be as willing or able to push the big red nuclear retalliation button as the career politicians and generals in the capital. ICBMs like the ones carried by nuclear subs are easier to detect and intercept (or more realistically retalliate against the launcher), because they have to reach high altitudes to fly with less wind resistance, while nukes deployed via even normal un-stealthed aircraft can be camouflaged more easily, as they don’t have to have the range or size of ICBMs. they don’t necessarily know just from radar if its a nuke on the plane and not a normal missile, for example, and weapon systems like low-altitude cruise missiles launched from planes relatively closeby to the target could take a path through terrain that would conceal it from radar by using treetops and mountainlines as cover.
Yes Russia is lucky their economy didn’t collapse,
not luck they have spent decades making their economy more sanction proof in the lead up to this as they saw it coming
