Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall the US and Europe agenda has been annexing all East Europe thru NATO .....and nobody complained.
So Putin protects his assets, ports, oil pipelines and waterways from Nato taking over Ukraine, and this at his border, and the World condemns his defense and calls it an “invasion”.
Putin is a thug still...but it’s quite amazing how the powers that be re-name every crisis to accomodate their agenda’s.
They are all independent countries that have chosen to align themselves with NATO. They could align themselves with Russia if they so chose. But why would they do so, given that Russia was responsible for imposing totalitarian communist dictatorships on them for over 4 decades, complete with mass killings of "class enemies"?
Another bit I find especially amusing is the story about how Russia contributed enormously to Nazi Germany's defeat. It's literally true, but only after Russia contributed enormously to Nazi Germany's victories in the West by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and serving as Germany's quartermaster for its blitzkrieg on the Western front. In effect, Russia helped put out a fire it helped set, but only after it had burned down much of the neighborhood and killed many of its neighbors (in the form of battle and concentration camp deaths in territories that would not have been conquered had Russia not given the Germans a free hand).. Ultimately, today's Russia is what Germany would have been like without a de-Nazification campaign. Russians think they saved the world, when they poured gasoline on it and struck a match. After WWII, they continued with a wicked campaign of spreading Godless totalitarianism with guns and Stalin-worshipers while urging the mass murder of class enemies. While I understand the tribal reflexes of ethnic Russians and pro-Russian Slavs, non-Russian Russophiles are overlooking a lot of things.