Comments by "Sam Aronow" (@SamAronow) on "Is Putin Right About Nato's Eastward Expansion? - TLDR News" video.

  1. Putin (and that Mearsheimer guy who blames this invasion on the west) cannot conceive of small states as having agency. In his mind, they are just puppets and potential puppets of the Great Powers. Combine this with centuries-old Russian political narrative that western opposition is personal rather than geopolitical and you get the self-fulfilling prophecy of today. Putin was not prepared for NATO or the EU to actually present a united front, especially not when his government has spent 20 years sowing disunity within that front, because he cannot conceive of his own actions as a unifying threat to a coalition of independent nations.
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