I recently had a discussion with someone more senior than me and they were convinced that the whole deal was about resources in the first place. If anyone has some references and thoughts about this, please share.
I have thoughts. Maybe biased because I'm Russian.
Imagine I maimed a guy on the street because he was walking too slowly. Was "the whole deal" about him walking too slowly? Yes and no. He was walking slow. But also I was a violent psycho.
Imagine I killed my wife because she was wearing the wrong skirt and looked at another man. Was the whole deal about my wife behaving how I don't like? Yes and no. She was behaving in some way. But also I was a violent psycho.
People come up with all sorts if rationalizations and I definitely heard both "Ukraine had resources Russia needed" and "Ukraine was willing to sell resources to US".
Resources? Excuse me, look at the map? You know that tiny Netherlands beats Russia in agriculture exports. Russia has the most reserves of mineral resources of any country in the world. The country has insane resources already and its corrupt government is unable to make good use of them.
But anyway. They say Ukraine was willing to sell resources to US (those people like to use loaded phrases like "US wanted to siphon resources from Ukraine") and Putin didn't like it? Well there's a well known way to solve this "problem": offer a better deal, don't be a dick, invest, stuff also called "diplimacy".
Resources, NATO, US military complex, whatever, mostly those things are bullshit, maybe they did motivate Putin, who knows. It's just mentioning those things with a solemn face full of insight as if they explain something is what paints a person as Putin supporter and aggression apologists in my eyes. Because none of those things justify the choice of mass murder by a violent psycho.
Martyrmade had a really solid episode about Ukraine that explained the Russian motiviations in a more understandable way.
If I remember correctly, a lot of the problems come down to broken promises of stopping NATO expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia made concessions, NATO did not. This is the Russian case as I vaguely remember it.
This is a reminder that geopolitics are wildly complicated and that the waters are too muddied for laypeople to make sense of in real time.
Your analogy holds. The psychopath must be stopped, but it's good to remember that the west provoked it when it had a chance to tame it.
I see your last paragraph but I am still triggered by attempts to explain "Russian" (they are Putin's) motivations, it gives them a pleasant aura of "this caused that so..." that makes my skin crawl. Also it's tempting to think in terms of resources, numbers, strategy game stuff, but as Russian I am aware of enough wild takes and rhetoric by people in Putin's circles to suspect it's mostly about his legacy, ego and desire to be in history.
NATO expansion was not really a threat to Russia beyond Putin's pretense. Putin pulled forces from Finland border after it joined. I hope the wrong lesson won't be learned.
Most of this narrative comes from Mike Benz who is a former State Department employee that has began trying to educate people on some of the shadier aspects of US Diplomacy. A major facet that he talks about is how the US combines NGOs and non-government investment in order to achieve diplomatic goals.
After the 2014 invasion, the US realized that breaking EU dependence on Russia natural gas would put a serious dent in Putin's wallet.
In response, various groups within the military industrial complex decided to invest into Burisma, where Hunter Biden was oddly a board member with little experience. Burisma's goal was to develop the mineral and natural gas deposits in the Donbas region. Ultimately, Burisma was prevented from this mission because of the 2022 war.
