Most of the reasons bandied about as to why Putin invaded Ukraine are clearly nonsense, unless he is insane. Denazification? Reclaiming lost Russian territory? A buffer zone between evil NATO and Mother Russia proper? Winning a popular war to burnish his tough guy image and distract his 'voters' from the failing economy/massive corruption (of which he is the main beneficiary)? They all seem implausible to me.
I watched a 40 minute video by Real Life Lore on YouTube which does seem very plausible, and does not presume insanity on Putin's part, the post title is a quote from that.
Basically, all his invasions and interventions - Georgia, Chechnya, even Syria, annexing The Crimea and now Ukraine - are about securing oil and gas reserves; bullying neighbouring countries with such reserves or pipelines into compliance (Kazakhstan, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan); securing shipping routes (Aral Sea and Black Sea); generally controlling territories which Russia needs to sell oil and gas to Europe; etc. There are apparently lots of gas reserves in the Sea of Azov, which Russia now has surrounded.
And he got away with all the previous ones, the West did little to stop him apart from a few token sanctions, so he thought we would turn a blind eye to this one, which we didn't. Sleepy Joe as good as declared war on him personally.
Anybody who starts bleating "But what about the Americans invading Iraq? They are just as bad!" can shut up. For sure, that was largely about oil (David Frost goaded Donald Rumsfeld into blurting that out) and not about WMDs (surely nobody believed that crap) or because Hussein was harbouring Al Qaeda (clearly bollocks). But the Yanks did not carpet bomb all the large cities, they didn't want the domestic backlash and dreamed they could win over the local population (yeah, right). By their admittedly low standards, they went out of their way to hit only military targets. And it was not too difficult to dislodge Hussein as a dictator, there was hardly a groundswell of popular support for him, the various factions were looking forward to fighting with each other again.
Which is also why Putin couldn't care less if he carpet bombs the Donbas back to the Stone Age, he needs to control the geographic territory, not the people. They are superfluous to requirements (and he'd rather they all fled, today's civilian is tomorrow's partisan).
Also, Putin fights like a girl, belying his tough guy image.
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