this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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I acknowledge the argument NATO is encircling Russia. To what extent does Ukraine differ from other actions by Russia such as Georgia in 2008? Which sorts of actions are not resistance to NATO encircling?
Ukraine is an interesting case, due to the Euromaidan coup in 2014 leading to the nationalists taking control. Prior to Euromaidan, relations with Russia weren't so bad, actually.
My understanding of Euromaidan is likely tainted, but wasn't that a Ukrainian alignment to the European Union and not NATO? Aligning to the European Union would still be a move away from Russian influence.
It was generally a pro-western coup. You can't really disentangle the EU from NATO from the US along clean lines, they have lots of overlap. NATO, in 2021, affirmed its plans of further integrating Ukraine.
Really, Euromaidan was sparked by Yanukovych pivoting away from the more predatory IMF loan offer to the less predatory Russian loan offer. Indeed, the loan from Russia had better terms, the IMF loan would have forced Ukraine to slash their healthcare and education budgets, and stop subsidies in natural gas (which kept energy prices low) as part of the loan terms.
yeah, they could have been like Belarus!