[If you can’t comprehend modern-day Russia IS NOT the old Soviet Union, you’re either consumed with Russophobia or choosing to be willful ignorant. ]
It’s the same old Russian empire with different labels. Nobody gave a damn about Russia’s ideology - it was the nation’s massive size and its grabby tendencies that got people worked up. If Russia had starved every single person in the country to death, no skin off our collective noses. Heck, Hoover arranged for American aid, and his success at propping the Bolsheviks up played into his successful presidential campaign.
It’s not an ideological problem. It’s the fact that Russia is 4x the size of the EU combined, really close to the key parts of Europe, and has a 1000-year history of territorial expansion. Unlike Russia, the EU is small and densely populated - these countries can’t move their capitals away from Russia without ending up in the sea. If Russia feels NATO is too close to Moscow, it has 11 time zones’ worth of land to which it can move its capital.
But that wouldn’t make Putin Vladimir the Greater. Gotta execute a successful land grab for that. So away we go. What the West needs to do is make this a rerun of Russia’s other failed wars. This won’t deter Russia forever, short of the Russian empire’s dissolution and devolution into Metropolitan Novgorod, but should at least keep its treasury and appetite for human losses at a low ebb for a few decades until it’s ready for another round. It won’t be quick and it won’t be pretty, but it’s the only time-tested method to deter future such ventures.
Thanks ZF.