No natural defensive borders to protect St. Petersburg and Moscow.
compare it to supposed "serial invasions of Russia"??? What invasions?
In other words Russia has only been invaded once in the last 100 years, and on that occasion the Nazis would’ve beaten them if the USA and UK hadn’t fought Germany.
So even if we did invade Russia in 1918 (debatable) we saved their asses 25 years later.
NATO contained the Soviet Union but it never did so by attacking Russia.
Putin’s argument is irrational; it’s like saying that the UK should be ready to go to war with France at any moment simply because of Napoleon.
We contained the French at some times, they contained us, but that’s ancient history. The days of colonial war across the English Channel are long gone.
Likewise the Soviet Union contained imperial Europe and NATO contained the Soviet Union, but imperial Europe is no longer a geopolitical reality and neither is the Soviet Union.
NATO still exists, but so does CSTO. It’s not NATO’s fault that Ukraine, Moldova, Poland et al would much rather be in NATO than in CSTO; that’s Putin’s fault.
The Mexico analogy doesn’t really stack up.
If the Soviet Union had parked tanks and missiles along the border BEFORE 1991 then yes of course the USA would respond. The USSR and USA were on opposite sides of the Cold War.
Every other ex USSR and ex Warsaw Pact country can happily play with the USA, either in Europe or in Mexico, without triggering anything.
Why is Russia the only ex USSR founding state that’d trigger the USA? Because Putin is a warmongering fanatic who wants to party like the USSR and Warsaw Pact and Iron Curtain never went away, that’s why. It’s Putin’s regime that’s the problem.
Would Mexico get invaded by the USA just to prevent it from playing a bigger part in a revived Mercosur despite the USA having a deal with Mercosur?! Of course not.
But that was what was in Putin’s head when despite Russia having a trade relationship with the EU and Ukraine having already signed deals with China and Russia, he went apeshit when he heard Yanukovych and Azarov were supporting the negotiations for a trade deal between the EU and Ukraine.
Putin is a nutjob.
Yet its been Russia with the “serial invasion” of its neighbors for the last 75 years. they started immediately following WW2 (and some say it actually was happening before that - though I’m not aware of what those were... other than... Oh, what we know as Ukraine.
No natural defensive borders to protect St. Petersburg and Moscow.