FourPacketsOfPeanuts

Ah Pence, yes

Amazing, lol

I get the first two. Who did he try to have killed?

Valuable insight thanks

Yes good point

In terms of Moscow's loss of control, the EU was proving far more effective than NATO. Like the NATO secretary general said, the EU spread represented the start of the crisis, but the invasion was Russia's fault. Because they're belligerent assholes..

Lots of effort to make it immaculate but the 3 different types of wood in the downstairs clash horribly, eurgh..

I've started saying "Oh Buddah" just to mix it up a bit

You're not thinking forth dimensionally, Marty!

Putin feared the EU because it was expanding far faster than NATO. EU expansion offered valuable trade links to former soviet countries and in turn required they implement anti-corruption legislation, and in the words of NATO secretary general Robertson above "changed every aspect of society". That's what Putin was afraid of.

Look at what happened to Georgia.

Old soviet regime runs economy into the ground. In 2003 pro-democracy NGOs help organise a peaceful student protests that culminates in the Rose Revolution. Autocratic government out, democratic government elected for first time, immediately start plans to align with EU to recover the economy.

2006 signs joint statement with EU on economic cooperation. Also opens pipeline cutting out Iran and Russia and delivering Azerbaijan oil directly to EU friendly Turkey.

So in 2008 Russia invades Georgia's Tskhinvali and Abkhazia regions in an attempt to destabilise the country. This fails.

2013 Georgia signs deeper level of EU cooperation. Ukraine parliament makes legal guarantees it'll start to align with EU.

Putin was out of time, his Caucasus route to the middle East was closing forever, economic influence via the black sea was closing off, so he grabbed Crimea. It was the EU not NATO that surrounded him.

And that's what the NATO secretary general said.

If I had to guess if say Putin saw NATO expansion as a problem but rather slow and so not urgent. Whereas EU expansion could actually be a worse because of how quickly it spreads. Not least because countries seeking deeper trade ties with the EU are basically committing themselves to anti-corruption reforms and thereby slipping from his grasp long long before any serious talk of NATO is happening (see: Georgia, or my long summary elsewhere in these threads)...

I think on this occasion I'll defer to how a secretary general of NATO chooses to phrase it

No, I was making the point that it's currently popular to shit on the West exporting its ideals, but when it's something as blindingly obvious as "maybe 9 year old girls shouldn't be forced into marriage" then maybe on this one occasion that sense of superiority is well placed and necessary