Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

This article from the BBC puts the Ukrainian military death toll to 72,000 and the Russian military death toll to 230,000.
 
Here are some quotes on the expansion of NATO:

Putin's grievance against Nato dates back to 1990, when he claims the West promised not to expand "an inch to the East".

However that was before the Soviet Union collapsed and it was based on a limited commitment made to then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev said "the topic of Nato expansion was never discussed" at the time.

 
While it is true that almost all East-European countries joined NATO (and the EU) in the 1990’s, you cannot blame “Western Imperialism willing to surround Russia with Nuclear missiles” for that.
 
No, these are countries who lived under Soviet domination after WWII. All of them know about the DNA of the Russian state. Russia invaded Georgia in 2005 and Crimea in 2014. Before that there is the Chechen war. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation had a window of opportunity to become a westernized, economic and geopolitical power in the world. But it became a mafia state in the 1990’s and an autocratic / imperialistic / expansionist state after the election of Putin in 2002. So you cannot blame NATO if all of Russia’s neighbors are looking for ways of not being within Moscow’s “sphere of influence”.
 
/ This works for all countries: Turkey was recently banned from the F-35 program and Europe is refusing to sell us Eurofighters. We are currently unable to go beyond our aging fleet of F-16’s.
 
That’s simply the sort of things that happen when you have no regard for the existing world order and the basic interests of countries surrounding you.
 
So it’s not / cannot be the fault of NATO. Putin is a liar. Everything he says is a lie and he is a disaster for the Russian people.  
 
Complete BBC article:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-did-putin...30503.html