Russia begins moving troops into eastern Ukraine

[CKwi88]

(02-24-2022, 06:19 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: I love how people instantly, not even one page in, start blaming Trump instead of the vegetable that's in the White House now.

Ask yourself this, though, why did Russia wait until Trump was out of office to go after Ukraine? If Trump was so friendly with Putin, he would have wanted to invade while Trump was in office so he wouldn't have to fear any retaliation.

It's all speculative, but there are a few logical guesses as to why Putin waited. 

One reason is that in Putin's eyes, having Trump in the White House was an asset to him. Trump did plenty in his time in office to promote Russian interests (like readmission into the G7) and also to undermine Ukraine (accused Ukraine of interfering with the US elections for example). So life was good for Putin under Trump, his ambitions over Ukraine could wait. 

It's been mentioned in this thread before that Putin would undoubtedly have seen Trump as unpredictable. Trump undermined our allies plenty, and very easily could have gone rogue in a response to Russia's aggression. It seems like NATO/UN/EU/Collective West is going to leave Ukraine out to dry, as the options are directly interfere and defend a non-NATO non-EU member which could be perceived as an unnecessary escalation of the conflict to World War levels or to sanction the daylights out of Russia and hope for the best. Trump's lack of understanding of international and geopolitical relationships, coupled with his overarching desire to "appear strong" could have easily resulted in a worse result for everyone involved. 

Another reason is that Putin is acting much like he did with Crimea. While Putin's first desire is certainly a return to form of Russian influence over Eastern Europe, a secondary objective of Putin's will always be to undermine the USA and it's political atmosphere. Part of the US swinging to Trump, a positive for Putin, was Obama's perceived weakness over the annexation of Crimea. While Trump's victory was certainly more than "Americans wanting a (perceived to be) strong leader" it was a component. Putin is going to laughing all the way with this narrative being spun of "Biden is so weak, Trump would have been better!" as it furthers his desires in increasing ever more the division in the United States, and potentially for the next POTUS to be from the political party much favorable to him. 

I get that the easy answer is "Putin feared Trump", but like all international relations, it's much more complicated than that.