>>/49682/
> The cause of this war was the Russian fear that a strong Nato force in Ukraine could easily take Moscow or cut Russia off from the Caucuses and black sea due to the relatively close distances and open and flat terrain.
The real problem is, ballistic missiles with nuclear payload has a very short travel time to the Russian core, which is about the same Moscow-Volgograd-Kazan triangle how Szálasi described it in WWII (see the other thread for this).
The Soviet Union had the advantage that all the lands around kept afar such attacks. They could send submarines close to US shores and hit important places quickly there, but it wasn't true in reverse. Now Ukraine would mean a land base.
However with Sweden and Finland joining NATO, Russia suffered a blow in this too. As far as geopolitics goes, Russia was cornered in, US/NATO forced her to choose minor gains in Ukraine, but made her give up the neutral Skandis.
The US keeps the pressure on and pokes at Russia because she can't let Europe out of her control. And Europe would gain more and more independence with a EU friendly Russia, in fact EU could reach self-sufficiency, and wouldn't need the US's hand up in her ass anymore.