It's an ego thing.

The war is about Russia’s pipeline access to the European energy market. About 15 years ago the US approached Ukraine with a deal: help with developing their newly-discovered reserves in exchange for using Ukraine’s control of the Soviet-era pipelines to cut off and fully replace Russia as the main supplier of Europe. The US would get Putin’s government cut off from its source of power (energy sales) and Ukraine would get rich. Russia fought back against this energy partnership for several years and ultimately failed with the Euromaidan. Putin escalated it a military action in 2014 taking Ukraine’s most important reserves in the Black Sea and starting an uprising in the East of the country making sure Western oil companies would pull out. Even though this operation was a success the US-Ukraine energy project continued, and Zelensky renewed Ukraine’s commitment to it and future seizing back Crimea with Western support. The US also was working on trying to kill expansion to Nord Stream, Russia’s insurance against being cut off via Ukraine and signaling that the US was also still committed to the project. Putin decided to end the threat once and for all with a regime change in early 2022. The regime change operation failed, but since the European energy market is everything to Putin and his circle he had to continue to the war no matter the cost because losing this energy war means the destruction of his power system and the dynasty he and his circle are trying to establish Now please do your part and spread this around, let’s fight cartoon propaganda and make a better-informed world together

Kill as many ethnic Russians and Ukrainians as possible for Israel's benefit. Everything else, resources, markets, land, etc. is secondary or even tertiary to his goal.

>>41169 Empire. And the glory and power found therein.

>>41169 >What was the point of doing all this circus? survival, obviously. Without a clear line to nuke western europe, Russia loses its ability to project Mutually Assured Destruction. Ironically, nothing being negotiated with at the moment will fix this either, even giving them half of Ukraine wont help, that'll just mean they still have to fire ICBMs over countless anti-ICBM NATO bases before being able to hypothetically hit a target. Until this changes, Putin's gonna chimp out regularly to stay alive.

>>41169 It's worth noting that the Russia-Finland border is geographically very different to the Russia-Ukraine border. Karelia is full of lakes, rivers and wetlands. In contrast, the Ukraine-Russia border is a 1000km wide gateway straight into Russia's economic heartland, with zero natural obstacles in the way. So it's not surprising if Russia doesn't care as much about Finland joining NATO as it cares about Ukraine. If Ukraine was turned into a NATO FOB, the preparations necessary to defend against any potential cross-border incursion would be ruinously expensive for Russia.

>>41196 >Empire >power found therein Map painting isn't very relevant anymore. Land used to matter back when agriculture and mining was the main source of a country's wealth; today things like infrastructure, industry and technology matter far more. Nowadays, land only matters for geostrategic reasons (buffer states or staging grounds) or if it contains some extremely valuable natural resource (Ukraine does not have resources that justify the expense of seizing it)

>>41293 There are already Aegis Ashore batteries in Poland and Romania. Why would more batteries in Ukraine make a difference in that regard? The main Russian MAD target is CONUS, and Russian ICBMs targeting CONUS would fly north over the Arctic