Putin To Ukraine - Leave The West Behind

A prosperous, democratic Ukraine with economic and political ties to the United States and the European Union?  Vladimir Putin has made it clear that that's the last thing he wants.

Controlling Ukraine - called "the Ukraine" by the Russians, as if were a possession to exploit for their own benefit (like its productive farmland, Ukraine having been the breadbasket of the old Soviet Union) - is the primary reason Putin sent troops into the eastern part of the country to aid pro-Russian separatists, and it's why he is rumored to be planning an invasion of Ukraine.  He's placed 127,000 troops along the border.  .  This would cause alarm for the Europeans, who rely on natural gas through a Ukrainian pipeline, and it would cause even more alarm for the Ukrainians, who are making a concerted effort to free itself from centuries of Russian domination and ally itself with he Western democracies.

The Russians are afraid of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expanding into Ukraine, which would put along their border a NATO member nation much larger than the three Baltic States (note to wise guys: a Russian administrative region not contiguous with the rest of the country borders Lithuania) and bring the Atlantic defense alliance that much closer to Moscow.  The Russians have been paranoid about other power encroaching on their homeland, and have fought for centuries to expand and preserve their sphere of influence, which is why Catherine the Great wiped Poland off the map and the Soviet Communist elite tried to do the same to the Baltics.  Putin isn't just making noise about invading Ukraine - he' more or less threatening to do it.  He does not want Ukraine to look westward as long as threaten Russian hegemony in the East.

So far, efforts to ward off a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as promise not to let Ukraine join NATO, and Russian demands that NATO pull military forces back to NATO countries that joined the alliance before 1999.   There hasn't been a breakthrough yet, but every little effort to preserve peace helps.  Because the last time a great power threated the sovereign of an eastern European country, it led to a world war.