Recently, there has been a large-scale conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine is after all a small country, in the face of Russia's attack, almost powerless, the beginning of the war, the war situation is in a one-sided state, Ukraine was defeated. Why are Ukraine and Russia fighting? What does Ukraine mean to Russia?
In 1949, NATO was formally established, with 12 founding members at the beginning, NATO has a large number of nuclear weapons and conventional forces, in fact, a military organization in the West, and the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has been expanding eastward, now NATO has 30 member states, Russia's western border, only Belarus and Ukraine have not yet joined NATO, NATO's eastward expansion, to Russia has added tremendous pressure, Russia had to adjust its strategic policy, from the previous non-stop soft to tough on the West to the end.
Before 2014, Ukraine has been oscillating between pro-Russian and pro-Western, in March 2014, affected by the Crimean incident, Ukraine accelerated closer to the West, once Ukraine fell to NATO, Belarus will be surrounded by NATO on three sides, under the role of economic sanctions, color revolution, Belarus will absolutely fall to NATO, at that time, the geographical buffer between russia's western region and NATO will be wiped out, and domestic peaceful development will be affected, which Russia cannot tolerate, so prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. It's Russia's bottom line.
In March 2014, at the behest of Russia, Crimea, which is dominated by Ethnic Russians, voted to join Russia, and the reason why Russia did this was to take control of Crimea and ensure the safety of the Black Sea Fleet. The task of the Black Sea Fleet is to control the Turkish Strait and go out of the Mediterranean Sea to deal with the US Sixth Fleet, if Ukraine joins NATO, in the future Crimea will be affected by the West, resulting in Russia losing control of Crimea, the Black Sea Fleet will be locked, so Russia can only do everything possible to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
There are two conditions for joining NATO, one is that there is no state of war, and the other is that there can be no territorial disputes. Therefore, Russia sent troops to Ukraine to prevent it from joining NATO, and now Ukraine is already on the barbecue grill, where Ukraine will go, we will wait and see!