> We are talking about what causes us particular concern and anxiety, about those fundamental threats that year after year, step by step, are rudely and unceremoniously created by irresponsible politicians in the West in relation to our country. I mean the expansion of the Nato bloc to the east, bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders.
It isn't obvious that China is dealing with the same sort of pressures in East Asia.
[0] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-putin-s-declar... - although technically I suspect he was declaring Special Military Operation.
If NATO anxiety was the primary factor for the war in Ukraine, Russia wouldn't be so blasé about draining troops and hardware from its borders with NATO countries to throw them into the meat-grinder.
They would still probably do it, mind you, but it would be a huge scandal and a subject of existential dread for Russian media and elites.
The fact that they've been stripping their NATO borders bare with barely anyone noticing or caring shows that nobody views the prospect of a NATO invasion as realistic. It was always a fig leaf.
(Although maybe there were scandals and I never heard of them. My exposure to Russian media is filtered through Western media. But I heard about other scandals and anxieties.)
Nobody has ever suggested that there was a prospect of a NATO invasion of Russia. That is crazy talk; it'd be the end of civilisation in the northern hemisphere. They aren't deploying troops to ward off a NATO invasion, that is what the ICBMs are for.
