Will Russia Invade Ukraine & What Does Putin Really Want? Crimea, Novorossiya & NATO Explained HD

Is Russia planning to invade Ukraine and why does Russia care so much about Ukraine in the first place? Right now, Russian forces have been building up near the border. Analysts say they’re seeing intel that shows Russia is preparing for a military offensive potentially early next year. However, Russia denies that it wants to invade Ukraine and says its troop movements are defensive, something that several European countries aren’t buying. So why would Russia even want to invade Ukraine and start a war? There are a couple of reasons. The first is national identity. Ukraine and Russia have a lot of shared history. Before 1991 both were a part of the USSR or Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed Russia emerged from the ashes and several the republics that were a part of the Union like Ukraine gained independence. Many Russians’ including the top Russian himself President Vladimir Putin still consider some of these former Soviet states to be Russian and Putin has repeatedly said he believes the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy. There are people living in Ukraine that identify as Russian, however most of the country identifies as Ukrainian and is keen to see Ukraine remain independent. Ukraine also holds a lot of strategic importance. It has access to the black sea valuable natural resources and important trade routes. Plus, it’s a place where Russia would like to have military bases. When you zoom out a bit more, Ukraine also represents a bit of a buffer zone between Russia and the rest of Europe or more importantly a buffer between Russia and members of NATO. NATO is a military alliance that Russia considers a threat. NATO denies this and says it’s a purely defensive organisation. When you’re a NATO member an attack on one is an attack on all. This is designed to keep NATO members safe from invasion. But Ukraine is not a member of NATO even though it would like to be. Russia on multiple occasions has pressured NATO to not give Ukraine membership. NATO’s chief has publicly rejected Russia’s demands to deny Ukraine entry but if Ukraine did gain membership there are genuine worries that Russia would respond aggressively either militarily or economically. For example, Germany one of the largest members of NATO gets a significant chunk of its natural gas from Russia. So just how likely is an invasion? Russia has already invaded Ukraine before. In 2014 Ukraine’s President who was accused of being pro-Russia and anti-European Union was kicked out during the Ukraine revolution. Shortly after the revolution kicked off Russian forces invaded Ukraine and took control of two different areas of Ukraine: Crimea and eventually parts of the East. Both areas are known to be compared to other parts of Ukraine home to more ethnic Russians or Ukrainians that are sympathetic to Russia. At first Russia denied it had any involvement and said that the troops that had taken control of Crimea weren’t theirs. There was a lot of interna