What Russia Doesn’t Want You to Know About Your History

throughout Russia's years-long invasion of Ukraine a central justification made by the Russian side in the war for having invaded Ukraine in the first place has been the expansion of the NATO military Alliance right up towards Russia's borders over the years since the end of the Cold War the Kremlin currently insists that in 1990 just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact NATO and Western officials allegedly made assurances to Moscow that NATO would never expand a single inch forward to the east in the new world that was emerging in Europe but over

the years that followed the Kremlin argues the NATO then betrayed Russia and went back on their word by admitting Poland czechia and Hungary into the alliance in 1999 followed by Estonia laia Lithuania Slovakia Romania and Bulgaria in 2004 and their subsequent guarantees towards both Georgia and Ukraine towards future membership in the alliance that was extended in 2008 which in the kremlin's argument finally crossed Russia's red lines and supposedly forced them into acting militarily in order to avoid becoming encircled by NATO this argument made by the Kremlin that the West supposedly betrayed them and broke their

promises made in the early 1990s has become the foundation for Russia's justification behind their brutal ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the Russian government uses that argument to shift the blame for the unimaginable Horrors that they're inflicting upon Ukraine onto the Western World instead and in this video I want to take the time to explain why NATO actually enlarge towards Russia's borders in the aftermath of the Cold War why Russia's current arguments blaming the war on NATO's expansion don't hold as much water as you might think and I want to explain all of this primarily from

the perspective of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe themselves who each decided to join NATO voluntarily of their own accord for their own strategic reasons in the later 1990s and the early 2000s back in November of 1989 the Berlin Wall had just collapsed in Germany and the prospect of Germany reunifying again between East and West for the first time in 45 years had suddenly become a real and unexpected geopolitical possibility in the weeks and months that followed intense negotiations began between the United States the Soviet Union the European States and the two germanies on

what German reunification might end up looking like there were in theory only two practical possibilities that could be foreseen at the time East Germany would either be absorbed into West Germany and by extension East Germany's territory would be subsumed into the NATO alliance that West Germany was already a part of or East Germany would be absorbed into West Germany and the new unified Germany would become a neutral State neither in NATO nor in the Warsaw Pact in the center of Europe the neutral option however was sharply rejected by European States like France and the UK

who feared what a United and Powerful Germany outside of NATO in the core of Europe would mean for the future in light of Germany's militant past they argued at the time that in order to keep Germany Democratic and invested in European unity and stability all of Germany needed to be fully incorporated into European institutions like NATO and could not be left neutral on their own and so the US ultimately agreed with that Viewpoint and pressed on with negotiations with the Soviets to accept NATO enlargement to Encompass East Germany's territory after the reunification process was completed

only 3 months after the Berlin Wall had collapsed in February of 1990 then US Secretary of State James a baker and his West German counterpart Hans dietr genser met with the Soviet Union's leader mle gorbachov to discuss what the status of a reunified Germany would look like in the future during that meeting archival evidence suggests that Baker offered a verbal Assurance to gorbachov that in the event of the United States maintaining its military presence in a future unified Germany within the framework of NATO there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction or military Presence by

a single inch in the Eastern Direction end quote to some this statement could be interpreted as Baker promising that NATO would not expand eastwards from West Germany to Encompass the territory of East Germany or potentially any further east into Europe as well and a few months later in May of 1990 the then Secretary General of NATO Manfred Varner echoed similar assurances regarding Eastward NATO enlargement verbally during a speech in Brussels similar verbal assurances were made by other high-ranking us and Western officials to Soviet leaders during this early period of negotiations but at around the same

time the US National Security Council also suggested that the idea of keeping the former East Germany out of NATO within the context of a unified Germany was going to be an unworkable idea in practice and so they quickly clarified that Baker's comments only meant the NATO troops themselves wouldn't be deployed any further east into the former East Germany from their current positions in West Germany after reunification while territorially East Germany would be fully within the legal coverage of the alliance none of these verbal assurances were ever formerly ritten down on paper and new a treaty

and as the negotiations Contin to evolve and moved on through the rest of the year in 1990 those early verbal assurances and ideas were steadily dropped with time months later in September of 1990 the negotiations finally culminated with a treaty on the final settlement with respect to Germany which the Soviet Union signed and which recognized that Eastern Germany would be fully incorporated into West Germany including its membership in NATO while NATO agreed that they wouldn't construct any permanent military bases in the former East Germany or station any nuclear weapons there nothing in that treaty was

ever mentioned about the prospect of NATO membership being expanded anywhere else in Europe or what that might even look like largely because at the time it was signed in September of 1990 the idea of NATO membership expanding to any other country further east than Germany was rather inconceivable because they were all still members of the Soviet Le Warsaw Pact and many of them still had tens of thousands of Soviet troops deployed to their territories like Poland Czechoslovakia and Hungary nobody at that time on either side of the negotiations could have know known that within just

over a year's time in the future the Warsaw Pact would dissolve and then the Soviet Union itself would catastrophically collapse and so at the time in 1990 no written guarantees were ever made on the potential enlargement of NATO into any of these other states and it's questionable if any serious discussions about that possibility were even made through 1990 so in October of 1990 Germany reunified NATO was extended to cover the former East Germany's territory but without the presence of any troops deployed there and the Soviet Union's internal collapse began rapidly accelerating in often violent fashion

all three of the Baltic states had unilaterally declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 but they initially went largely unrecognized and even M gorbachov was unwilling to accept their loss Soviet troops were deployed into Lithuania in January of 1991 to try and restore the kremlin's authority there which led to a violent confrontation that saw 14 Lithuanian civilians killed by the Soviet soldiers and more than 700 others injured before the Soviets decided to withdraw while around the same time Soviet troops in neighboring Latvia attacked the Latvian Ministry of the interior in the capital of

Ria that also ultimately resulted in the tragic deaths of six latvians as well all of which turbocharged the support of the Baltic states for their independence from Moscow even further the Warsaw pack Alliance was finally dissa between February and July of 1991 and the tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers deployed in Poland Czechoslovakia and Hungary began their process of withdrawal which in the case of Poland was not completed for 2 more years until 1993 by early August of 1991 with the Warsaw pack dissolved and Germany reunified the Soviet republics of Estonia laia Lithuania mova Georgia

and Armenia had all already declared their independence while gorbachov attempted to salvage what was left of the Soviet Union with a new treaty that would have converted the country into a less centralized federal system all of the remaining nine Soviet republics who had not already declared their Independence approved of the new treaty except for Ukraine who was very hesitant about it and then a group of Communist Party hardliners launched a cud d' the day before the treaty was supposed to be signed in order to prevent it from going into Force into restore the kremlin's authority

over all of the republics the coup collapsed after only 2 days but it was still enough to convince Ukraine that Moscow couldn't be trusted and so Ukraine declared its own independence just a couple of days later after the coup had ended and with that the Soviet Union was effectively doomed and the entire country would be dissolved altogether within only a few more months by December of 1991 at this moment at the very end of 1991 the Russian Empire in both at zaris and communist varities had collapsed twice during the 20th century and all of the

nervous freshly independent states of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of 1991 looked back to the precedent of what had happened historically the last time the zarus version of of the Russian Empire had collapsed in 1917 when that happened for a brief moment in time the chaos of the Empire's collapse also resulted in a brief window of opportunity for the smaller Nations who had been occupied by the Russians for centuries to secure their independence before the Russians could regain their strength again and take them back within a year of the Imperial Collapse by 1918

Russia was enveloped within a civil war while Poland Finland Estonia laia Lithuania bellus Ukraine ggia Armenia aeran and the Muslim region of the north Caucasus including Chia had all declared their independence from Russia but after the Bolsheviks began emerging victorious in the Russian Civil War the Soviet Russians invaded and reconquered chia Georgia Armenia aeran Ukraine and bellus all by 1922 when they proclaimed the creation of the Soviet Union but they had also attempted to conquer the Baltic states and Poland during this early period as well by August of 1920 the Soviet Russia had invaded and

successfully occupied about half of Poland and were at the gates of Warsaw itself with Victory appearing imminent but then they were unexpectedly and decisively defeated by the poles at Warsaw the whole tide of the war changed after that and the poles managed to push the Russians further back until a peace treaty was signed between them in 1921 that established Poland's inner War borders and which also secured Poland's independence from Russia for the first time in the past 126 years since the Polish state was extinguished by the Russians all the way back in 1795 and in

their fight for independence against the Russians between 1919 and 1921 around 50,000 poles paid for it with their lives and unfortunately for Poland it would only be the first war they would fight against Russia for their independence during the 20th century and they would ultimately lose the second war only 18 years after Poland and the Soviet Union Ed their first war the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed on the infamous Molotov ribbon trop pact and August of 1939 The Divided Eastern Europe between their own spheres of influence within weeks of The Pact being signed Germany

invaded Poland from the west and shortly after the Soviet Union invaded Poland once again from the East the Soviets then annexed the Eastern territories of Poland they conquered into the Soviet republics of Bellis and Ukraine which remain to this day a few months later in November of 1939 the Soviets launched another allout Invasion into Finland with the initial goal of Conquering the entire country and absorbing it back into the red version of the Russian Empire but after they suffered enormous casualties in Finland and failed to make significant advances they settled with forcing Finland to De

seeding about 10% of their territory over to Russia instead which also remains Russian to this day and nearly 26,000 fins were killed during The Invasion and then a few months after their invasions of Finland and Poland the Soviets invaded and conquered all three of the Baltic states over the summer of 1940 and forcefully Annex them directly as constituent republics into the Soviet Union and they also also threatened Romania with a further Invasion unless they agreed to surrender over the territory of bessarabia which the Romanians only agreed to do Under the immense threat of War if

they did not which then essentially became the Soviet Republic of mova all of these Soviet invasions between 1939 and 1940 were launched into former territories of the zaris Russian Empire who had achieved and secured their independence over the previous 22 years since the collapse of 1917 then after Nazi Germany betrayed the Soviet Union and invaded them in 1941 the Soviets eventually managed to defeat them and push them all the way back to Berlin by 1945 and in the process the Soviet Red Army found its troops in control over most of Eastern Europe in the aftermath

of the second world war the Soviet Union re annexed Estonia lvia and Lithuania against their Wills annexed the former German territory of kingburg that they renamed to kenrad and forcefully imposed puppet communist regimes loyal to the Kremlin in the states their army came to occupy from Bulgaria to Romania to Hungary to Czechoslovakia to Poland and to East Germany which eventually became the members of the soviet-led Warsaw Pact and when some of these states attempted to resist their occupation by the Soviet Russian Empire they were met with extreme violence in 1956 when the hungarians rose up

in a mass Revolution against their Soviet installed puppet government the Soviet Army that was deployed to Hungary responded with an overwhelming Crackdown that killed as many as 3,000 hungarians and resulted in almost a quarter of a million hungarians fleeing the country as Exiles then a little more than a decade later in 1968 when the government of Czechoslovakia attempted to liberalize and moderate its harsh Soviet opposed Communist Regime the Soviet Union led the Warsaw Pact into an allout massive invasion of the country with half a million soldiers to crush the reforms that killed 137 people in

the country and seriously injured another 500 or so others all of this historical context of how Russia reacted after the first collapse of its Empire in 1917 with all of its subsequent attempts to forcibly reconquer the territories it felt it had lost heavily influence the Deep suspicions of the states of Central and Eastern Europe who emerged independent again after the second collapse in 1991 they almost all universally feared that given enough time Russia would one day regain its strength its power and its confidence and come for them again just like they did after the first

collapse in 1917 especially in light of the fact that the Russian Armed Forces didn't even complete their withdrawal from Poland until 1993 and they didn't complete their withdrawal from the Baltic states until 1994 many of them quickly came to see that their biggest guarantee of security from a revisionist Russia in the future that they didn't have between 1917 and 1940 would be by acquiring their membership in NATO and through it the extremely valuable Article 5 security guarantee that asserts that an armed attack on one NATO member state is an armed attack against all all of

them including the post Cold War sole remaining Global superpower the United States and then Russia almost immediately started doing things in the 1990s that appeared to confirm the suspicions of the Central and Eastern Europeans that Russia was going to attempt and rebuild its Lost Empire again just like they did after 1917 and that meant that they were all in a race against the clock to get themselves into NATO before Russia could get to them already as early as 1992 merely months after the Soviet Union collapsed the newly independent Russia under President Boris yelton intervened in

mova militarily a former Soviet Republic in order to support a pro-russian secessionist movement there in the region of transnistria the Russians supported war in transnistria against the movan government in 1992 killed hundreds of people and resulted in about 12% of moldova's internationally recognized territory coming effectively under Russian military occupation where roughly 2,000 Russian soldiers have been permanently deployed to ever since straight up into the present day and mova was far from the only recently independent country that the Russians intervened in and helped to dismember in the 1990s at around the same time that the Russian

army intervened in Moldova in 1992 Tajikistan another former Soviet Republic descended into a civil war that saw thousands of Russian soldiers enter into the conflict on the side of the pro-russian to G government in order to crush the Rebellion by 1997 the pro-russian government in Tajikistan had been stabilized by the Russian intervention and anywhere between 20,000 and 150,000 people were killed in the country during the war while as much as 20% of the entire population of Tajikistan had been internally displaced by the fighting and then there were also the events in Georgia of the early

1990s too in 1992 ethnic edian separatist forces have revolted against the Georgian government in the territory of South oia and while fighting between them and the Georgian government was ongoing over the summer of 19 1992 the chairman of the Russian Parliament at the time russlan kbov publicly accused the Georgians of allegedly committing genocide against the edans and threatened that Russia would forcibly Annex South oia unless Georgia immediately agreed to a ceasefire that allowed Russian peacekeepers to enter into the territory Russia mobilized troops along the border and armed skirmishes between the Russian and Georgian armies were

reported as the countries appeared to be on the brink of War before Georgia finally caved into the pressure and agreed on a ceasefire the left most of South oia under the deao control of the separatists and if that wasn't enough Russia decided to intervene in another rebellion in Georgia in the region of abazia too in August of 1992 just a couple months after the ceasefire in South oia was made another ethnic conflict broke out in the Georgian region of abazia between the ethnic abaz minority and the ethnic Georgian majority there the war in abazia turned

into a particularly brutal Affair that saw the deaths of tens of thousands of people and although Russia took an officially neutral position on the war in practice it came to much more heavily support the obca side in the war after the Georgians shot down a couple Russian military helicopters in early 1993 using unmarked aircraft in order to maintain plausible deniability the Russian Air Force bombed the Georgian held city of sukumi in abasia while hundreds of unmarked regular Russian troops were covertly deployed to the territory to fight alongside of the upasian and they even directly engaged

the Georgian armed forces in a battle near the Village of tamshi that resulted in hundreds of killed and wounded on both sides the covert Russian intervention on the side of the abas separatists in early 1993 decisively shifted the course of the war and in their Victory the Russian backed Oba separatists engaged in a widescale campaign of reprisals massacres and ethnic cleansing of the territory's remaining Georgian population more than 5,000 Georgian civilians were massacred by the obca forces and around a quarter of a million Georgians were forcibly expelled out of abazia into the rest of Georgia

which was later formally recognized as an act of ethnic cleansing by the organization for security and cooperation in Europe within only 2 years of the Soviet Union collapsing post Soviet Russia directly intervened in four wars in the posts Soviet world and helped to dismember the freshly independent states of mdova and Georgia which obviously alarmed the other freshly independent post Soviet and postwar saw PCT States and then alarming them even further the president of Russia at the time in 1993 Boris yelson launched a violent self coup in order to keep himself in power and to expand

the powers of the Russian presidency even further in September 1993 the Russian Parliament voted to impeach yelson and proclaimed his vice president to be the new acting president and then they all barricaded themselves within the Russian White House in Moscow yelson however refused to stand down and for the next several days intense fighting in the streets of Moscow took place between the supporters of yelson and the supporters of the parliament while the Russian army remained neutral at first but on the 4th of October in 1993 the Russian army finally decided to side with yelson and

then on his direct orders Russian tanks bombarded the White House where the parliament was still barricaded inside before the building was stormed by special forces units who arrested all of the parliament's leaders the whole incident represented the deadliest single event of street fighting in the history of Moscow since the October Revolution a total of 47 people were killed and hundreds of others were wounded in the violence while yelton's use of the army to crush the parliament who had voted to impeach him enabled him to greatly consolidate power and to strengthen the office of the presidency

it was this moment that especially alarmed the freshly independent states of Central and Eastern Europe because in a sense it symbolized the early death of any hope of democracy taking off in post Soviet Russia and it laid the foundations for the long Legacy of autocracy to return back to Russia again following the Soviet and the zaris periods and it would not be long after that before Russia would undertake the first allout reconquest of a lost piece of their empire in Cheta during the collapse of the Soviet Union the 15 separate republics that made up the

Soviet Union all declared their independence from the Soviet Union but several territories within many of those republics also tried to declare their independence from the republics one of the most notable examples of this was Chan the north Caucasus which was administratively an autonomous Republic within the Russian Soviet Republic during the Soviet era but Chia was and is very demographically distinct from the rest of Russia in 1991 as the Soviet Union was collapsing 96% of Cho's population were ethnic chin were overwhelmingly Muslims while only 1.6% of the territory's population were ethnic Russians there was also still

a significant degree of resentment among the chin population over the mass deportation of the entire chin population to Central Asia that had been ordered by Stalin during the second world war in which around half a million chin were forcibly deported and as many as 200,000 of them died or about 1third of their total population in 2004 the European Parliament would classify the event as an act of genocide perpetrated by the Soviet State against the Chans and the chin survivors were not allowed to return back to their native Homeland until 1957 which steadily led to the

chin demographically recovering and becoming a majority of the population in Chia Again by 1991 with this history of resentment and mistrust in mind Chia unilaterally declared its independence from Russia in November of 1991 just a month before the Soviet Union was formally dissolved three years of instability within Cheta followed as various Warlords and factions rose up and began fighting one another while Russia made several limited but unsuccessful attempts to reestablish its control Chia remained a deao independent state but when un recognized as such by any country in the world other than the Taliban ruled Afghanistan

by the end of November in 1994 a bit over a year after yelson attacked the Russian Parliament and Consolidated power yelton delivered an ultimatum to the chin government to the demanded everyone in the territory lay down their arms and surrender to Russia or else the chin chose or else and yelton ordered the Russian Armed Forces to launch a fullscale Invasion the Russians initially thought that the invasion of Chucho would be a swift Victory but instead it turned into a brutal Quagmire that chin resisted far more heavily than initially expected thousands of Russian soldiers were killed

and frustrated the Russians shifted their tactics to just obliterating chesa cities and Villages block by block with overwhelming artillery fire and air strikes to crush the territory's resistance with little regard for civilian casualties this strategy is estimated to have killed around 27,000 chin civilians in the capital city of gry within just the first five weeks after they started which represented the deaths of roughly 6% of gr's pre-war population then in April of 1995 a group of Russian soldiers entered into the Chin Village of Sashi where reportedly drunk and high on drugs they proceeded to Massacre

as many as 300 of The Village's civilian inhabitants which was condemned by International humanitarian Aid agencies from around the world at the time the Russians also utilized filtration camps in Chia where they detained around 200,000 chin throughout the course of the war adding to the indiscriminate methods that the Russian military dished out to the territory civilians by the summer of 1996 Chia was absolutely devastated by The Invasion it's been since estimated by several different sources that around 100,000 chin civilians were killed in the conflict largely by Russia's indiscriminate bombardments of chin cities and Villages representing

around 10% of chia's entire pre-invasion population being killed while half a million more chin had been displaced and tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded as well in their attempt to crush chesa and reincorporated back into Russia Russia undertook the heaviest and largest scale bombing campaign seen in Europe since the end of the second world war and they arguably partook in another genocide of the chin people as well by 1996 the ruins of chia's capital city gry looked like colored photographs of Berlin or Dresden or other cities ruined by World War

II the two sides eventually agreed on a ceasefire in 1996 the left Chia deao independent but completely ruined and crippled and only a few years later in 1999 under a new president Russia would eventually return and finish the job it started in Chia the first chin War as it would later come to be called was an early and horrifying precursor to the actions that Russia would later take in Syria and ultimately in Ukraine and as Russia's annihilation of chia was ongoing between 1994 and 1996 the other freshly independent nations of Central and Eastern Europe who

Russia had also used to dominate grew even more nervous that the fate of chia could in time become their own Fates as well if they failed to protect themselves and deter Russia from ever triy and they all steadily came to see that getting accepted into the NATO alliance and acquiring protection through NATO's Mutual defense Clause was going to be all of their best methods for doing that at the time however there was a substantial amount of debate within NATO and within the United States on the wisdom of extending NATO membership any deeper into Europe there

were some Western foreign policy experts in the 1990s who argued that NATO enlargement was unnecessary and that it would be unwise to extend America's Ironclad security guarantees Eastward into Europe to Nations who were not seen as core strategic interests of Washington and of course there was also the fear in the west that enlarging NATO further through Europe across former Warsaw Pact and Soviet States would enrage Russia and could potentially lead to the Russians fighting in order to prevent it but in light of Russia's massive Invasion and obliteration of chia its interventions into Georgia and mova

and the horrific Wars that were also going on in the former Yugoslavia at the time in Croatia and Bosnia that had collectively resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Europe NATO conducted a study in 1995 on the merits of further enlarging the alliance during this era of instability and it essentially concluded the European security stability and democracy could all be strengthened by extending NATO membership to more countries on the continent a couple years later by 1997 NATO would formally extend an invitation to join the alliance to the first three countries of

Central and Eastern Europe Poland Czech and Hungary but these three nations didn't simply join the alliance just because they asked to join it Poland in particular with its long history of being invaded and occupied by Russia and watching on nervously at the events that were unfolding in Cheta mdova and Georgia and knowing about the internal debates going on within native concerning the wisdom of expanding was so eager to join NATO and to secure its Mutual defense protection that Poland effectively black mailed its way into NATO instead polish government officials as early as 1995 began implying

to the Clinton Administration that if Poland were not invited to join NATO Poland would seek out its security through alternative means like by acquiring their own independent nuclear weapons Arsenal instead and then to add on even more pressure during the 1996 US presidential election season the the former president of Poland and the country's first democratically elected leader following the end of Communism La valessa personally visited Washington DC and started meeting with Clinton's political opposition the Republicans at the time the Republicans were more heavily backing the support of the NATO enlargement facilitation act in Congress against

Clinton which called for America's direct support in getting the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe into NATO as quickly as possible at the time Le PESA was widely viewed as a Polish hero who led Pol out of its occupation by the Soviet Union and so his influence among the Polish American community in the United States was considered substantial this was important because polish Americans made up very large percentages of the population in critical electoral swing States like Wisconsin Michigan and Pennsylvania and so even the implied threat of Le valessa campaigning for the Republicans in

these swing States was enough to add even further pressure on the Clinton Administration to begin lending its support for Poland's entry into NATO all of this finally culminated in the US Congress and Clinton passing the NATO enlargement facilitation act in 1996 NATO formally extending an invitation to join the alliance to Poland czechia and Hungary in 1997 and their formal entries into the Alliance 2 years later at the end of the decade in 1999 they joined NATO only 31 years after the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact had invaded Czechoslovakia and they marked the first of

the former Warsaw Pat states to be admitted into NATO since East Germany unified with West Germany they also joined NATO in the same year that Vladimir Putin first became Russia's prime minister theoretically second in power in the country only behind the president which was still nominally held at the time by Boris yelson and almost immediately as Putin Rose to power as the country's prime minister he led the Russian Armed Forces into a second allout invasion of chia that was much more successful than their first attempt the chin Capital gry already devastated from the fighting of

the first Invasion attempt that had ended only 3 years previously was subjected to 2 months straight of overwhelming aerial and artillery bombardment that almost completely leveled what little of it remained before a 100,000 Russian ground troops stormed into the territory to secure the ruins and mop up resistance once again tens of thousands of people in Cheto were killed while Gros itself was so badly damaged in the process that the United Nations labeled it in 2003 as the most heavily destroyed City on the planet but in the aftermath chesa was fully reconquered by the Russian army

and reabsorbed back into Russia the Russians installed an almost totalitarian puppet regime in a power to govern the territory the remains in charge there today and Putin's popularity in Russia skyrocketed enabling him to consolidate power next and to secure the country's presidency by 2000 and it was shortly after that in 2004 when NATO would add its next seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe all of whom had their separate histor hisorical Geographic and political reasons to fear an attack from Russia or another aggressor in Europe in the future Slovenia had just been invaded by the

sered Yugoslav Army as recently as 1991 Slovakia like czechia had been invaded by the Soviet Army as recently as 1968 while occupying Soviet troops hadn't left their country until 1991 Romania and Bulgaria each had dictatorial communist regimes imposed upon them while Romania had territory taken from them by the Soviets during the second world war and then of course the three Baltic states had all been invaded and directly conquered by the Soviets and were subjected to decades worth of population transfers and reification policies that had left behind more than 800,000 ethnic Russians across their countries following

the Soviet collapse whose supposed protection they feared Russia might one day use as a pretext for another Invasion and Conquest in the future NATO didn't move East in the post Cold War era so much as the freshly independent states of Central and Eastern Europe quickly moved West into prove it NATO never deployed any foreign permanent military bases to any of those Eastern and central European States who joined the alliance until after Russia invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea in 2014 and by now almost a couple decades later after they joined in 2004 following Russia's fullscale invasion

of Georgia in 2008 its massive military intervention in Syria and their massive invasions of Ukraine since 2014 that have killed hundreds of thousands of people do you think any of them regret their decision to have done so and joined NATO in Ukraine in particular Russia's ongoing allout invasion of the country since 2022 has resulted in by far the deadliest conflict in Europe since the second world war that has even exceeded the devastation that the Russian Armed Forces rout upon Chia during the 1990s its Invasion encouraged Finland and Sweden to apply to and join NATO next

and over nearly 3 years of war the conflict has likely caused more than 1 million human casualties making it among the deadliest conflicts anywhere in the entire 21st century over the past year in particular the Russian armed forces have made bloody but consistent gains across the east of Ukraine to the point where the Russian armed forces have conquered roughly 2700 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2024 representing a total area roughly the size of Luxembourg and which also represents roughly six times as much territory they have conquered from Ukraine as they did

in the previous year across 20 23 2024 was a very very difficult year for Ukraine and as their casualties Mount they are steadily losing more ground while countries on the other side of Ukraine and NATO especially Poland are growing more and more anxious and nervous about what is going to happen in the future and the current higher pace of Russia's territorial gains in Ukraine through 2024 began with Russia's capture of the city of diva in February that followed an enormous battle for the city's control just just as the Russians did a gry in the 1990s

the Russian Armed Forces first tried to Simply storm into a diva and take it and after that failed with catastrophic casualties they resorted to effectively obliterating of Diva with overwhelming artillery fire and air strikes before they slowly encircled it and advanced forward to mop up the remaining resistance the ukrainians had transformed of Diva into a veritable Urban Fortress and a ferocious battle for the city's control between October of 2023 and February of 2024 not only left the city itself in Ruins but it represented some of the fiercest Urban Street Fighting seen in Europe since the

second world war and it resulted in more Russian casualties alone than during the entire Soviet invasion of Afghanistan throughout all of the 1980s and though it was costly for Russia their capture of ab Diva ultimately opened up the path for their forces to continue advancing through the rest of the year further westwards across the donet province towards the next strategically important city psk where Russian forces are currently beginning to approach but unfortunately due to the inherently violent controversial in recent nature of discussing one of the biggest battles fought in modern Europe that claimed the lives

of tens of thousands of real human beings on both of the sides who were condemned to fighting it the next part of this video that would cover it would almost certainly cause the rest of the video before it to become demonetized and age restricted which ultimately would mean the YouTube's algorithm would have never promoted any of this video to you and you probably never would have seen any of it but thankfully I was still able to produce the next part of this video anyway because of the power of nebula where you can go and watch

the next part covering how the battle for of Diva went and what its implications have been for the Ukrainian Battlefield specifically and for European security more broadly and this is also just one of more than several dozen exclusive fulllength re life floor videos that you can only find on nebula in My overall modern conflict series there which can all only be found over there because of all of their darker more controversial subject material that means that there's a bunch of other previous episodes you can also go and watch right now that were very relevant to

this video like this episode going into depth on the wars in Chia during the 1990s this episode covering Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 this episode covering Russia's intervention in mova in 1992 this episode covering Russia's intervention in the Syrian Civil War or all of these episodes covering the whole course of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and all of the backstory that led up to it with brand new episodes releasing over there every single month and even better I also recently started another completely new monthly series on neula called warro which will track all of

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