u/Jazzlike-Strength730 - originally from r/GenZhou
Sorry, i don’t really know much about the situation in general.
This aged great
u/thesh019 - originally from r/GenZhou
Two reasons. One is our old friend the military-industrial complex. Edging closer to war = more weapons getting sold = more money for Raytheon and Boeing.The other is another classic, oil politics. Russia is a big oil producer, and Europe consumes a lot of oil, so it’s natural that oil flows from Russia to Europe. A huge amount of that flow has historically been through Ukraine, and Ukraine makes a lot of money on the fees they charge for oil moving through their country. More recently, for obvious reasons, Russia doesn’t want its oil held hostage by Ukraine, and has started construction on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The pipeline cuts through the Baltic Sea on a direct route from Russia to Germany, so no transit fees and no reliance on any third parties. Obviously Ukraine doesn’t like that, and neither does the US, so we figure the best way of stopping it is to whip up war frenzy and try to drive a wedge between Europe and Russia. If you pay attention, there’s a reason Germany is the one country that isn’t joining in on sending supplies to the Ukrainians.
aged like milk
NATO expansion to any ex-East-block countries is a violation of a treaty signed back in 91 (?) and Ukraine and Belarus were the last two on the list to blockade Russia from Europe.
Other than oil and gas that Ukraine has to pass to western oil companies to exploit (BP and Shell were already exploiting E.Ukraine deposits, and Biden’s son was an executive to the largest Ukrainian oil company, Ukraine is also a significant grains exporter. Russia among others depend on this export, which under NATO command it would be weaponized and sentencing Russia to famine under the blockade.
Ukraine also would pas its water rights of Black Sea to western oil companies effectively minimizing Russian presence in the Black Sea economic zone. A global attempt to convert international/public waters to privately owned and managed territories.
BP has been pumping nat.gas from Azerbaijan to Europe outside Russian control and benefit. The war pretty much guaranteed maximum flow and profit through this new pipeline (TAP)
Then there was an issue of inability to defend its own water ways outside the black sea. With the black sea becoming practically a NATO lake, it would be non-sensical to expect the UN or other international organization to defend Russia’s merchant fleet access to the Med.
Was Russian oligarchy and tycoons willing to lose Ukraine to their western adversaries? I don’t think they had much of a choice and it was too late to revert the damage done 10-15 years ago with EU/NATO proposed induction, through political means and influence. So this war had become inevitable and unavoidable for the Russian oligarchy to maintain control of Russia. Russia would have lost any sense of sustainability when this last move in the chessboard would have been made. To avoid check mate, Russia should have invaded as it was the only real option and hope to revert the damage while maintaining some dignity.
Having said all this, Putin just represents a 19th century type of elite through an pseudo-democracy , an isolated Russian capitalism, Russia’s prevention of accessing global markets for as long as Putin is alive at least has drawn a very ugly picture for its future.
