With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state, surrendering the arsenal of Soviet nuclear weapons that had been left behind in exchange for solemn Russian, U.S., and European commitments to honor Ukraine's territorial integrity.

From Hill :

December 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Russia lost its dominant position in Europe. Mr. Putin wants to give the United States a taste of the same bitter medicine Russia had to swallow in the 1990s. He believes that the United States is currently in the same predicament as Russia was after the Soviet collapse: grievously weakened at home and in retreat abroad. He also thinks NATO is nothing more than an extension of the United States. Russian officials and commentators routinely deny any agency or independent strategic thought to other NATO members. So, when it comes to the alliance, all of Moscow's moves are directed against Washington.

And here is the fundamental intractability of the problem : Putin seems to genuinely believe that there is a "western bloc" in which only the USA counts. It makes him feel important to think that he and the US president are the only two important people in the world.

The reality is that the world has gone multipolar, and NATO certainly only makes any sense as a defense against Russian military aggression; most Europeans would be glad to get rid of it, if only Putin would put his damn sabre away.

And of course Nato disastrously opened the door to military carve-outs with the bombing of Belgrade and the independence of Kosovo. So we get autonomous carve-out republics in Georgia, Moldavia, Donbass, and who have I forgotten?

In the absence of democracy in Russia, I'm afraid we're going to have to put up with this sort of crap until Putin dies. (I have read that he doesn't believe that western nations are any more democratic than Russia; I don't think he's that stupid. Just cynical enough to know that there are varying degrees of democracy. But his version is the degree zero.)

I don't know what Nato, or the EU, can actually do to make him stop. I pity the Russian people. They deserve better.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

"I believe that full-scale war is very, very, very difficult to expect, but we may see more localised conflict," Korsunsky told a news conference in the Japanese capital Tokyo.

"If war is going to happen, that will be the first ever in the history of mankind, war against a country which has on its territory 15 nuclear reactors, which has 30,000 km of gas and oil pipelines, full with gas and oil," said Korsunsky.

"If all these infrastructure is destroyed, there is no more Ukraine. But this is just one consequence. There is no more central Europe and probably western Europe would be affected, too."

"Our responses were fully coordinated with Ukraine and our European allies and partners," U.S. Secretary of Antony Blinken said in remarks. But, he noted, "we're not releasing the document publicly."