19 March 2014, 23:20
Quote:Putin's latest actions on Crimea are, in my opinion, secondly a land-grab. Putin is not trying to expand Russia. If he was he wouldn't do it in that way. He would simply start buying land in other countries and renting that land out. Plus, he's got a fricking massive country as it is! He's not grabbing for land.
Yes, "Land Grab" is a misnomer. What he probably is doing however, is securing an important geopolitical pivot-point in Crimea, and avoiding the "NATO encirclement". Russia has always been paranoid about its borders, and the risk of invasion; probably because those borders are so vast and permeable.
The word for "security" in Russian is "безопасность" (bez opasnost) which is a negative construct, translating as "absence of danger", as though danger was the norm.
Oh, and there's the resources..

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