Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "Hein Goemans - It’s Going to take More Dying and Destruction Before Russia is Prepared to make Deal" video.

  1. The threat to Russian identity is assimilation by China, and Russia seems to be just waking up to that possibility. However it is nigh blasphemous for Russia to see China in that light. NATO offers Russia a stable Russian border, long term. It does not offer some Russian biased sphere of influence beyond that border. China makes no such offer long term. Russia will soon need the West. It will need trade with the West to show China that it has its own agency and will not accept an undue dependency or subordination to China. And while Russia can probably continue to disqualify Ukraine from NATO, it may not be able to stop a smaller group of European bordering states forming a supplemental alliance with each other and the Budapest Memorandum signatories, Britain and the United States. Ukraine's security and that of the other border states need something like that or a mechanism for NATO to include Ukraine. Russia needs to subordinate its western ambitions in order to conserve its far east.
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