this video is made possible by curiosity stream and nebula. Watch another brand new full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflicts series that explains the entire course of the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, as well as the entire war so far between Russia and Ukraine since 2014, in the dawn bass. All of which you can access by signing up for the curiosity stream nebula bundle deal for less than 15 a year at curiositystream.com real life lore. Throughout the past few months, there has been almost constant news and coverage in the West about Russia's imminent plans to invade Ukraine. Started large-scale military drills this morning, and this is a very dangerous moment stoking fears of an invasion. More than 2,000 troops, according to American intelligence, sent within the 24 hours. American citizens should leave, should leave now. On the morning of February the 24th, these fears proved to be well-founded. Russia's President Vladimir Putin effectively

declared war on Ukraine and authorized the Russian military to invade the country. Explosions were quickly reported afterwards across the country. And immediately prior to this declaration, the Russian army had amassed around 200,000 soldiers along with their tanks, artillery equipment, and field hospitals across their border, and many others inside of Belarus along their border with Ukraine. For comparison, this is nearly the same size as the entire Ukrainian military, at about the same number of troops sent by the United States when invading Iraq in 2003. This is certainly large enough to be an effective invasion force. Even further, the Russian government has recognized the independence of the two breakaway states inside of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, and ordered Russian troops inside of both. When factoring in the Russian military presence already stationed in Crimea, you can quickly begin seeing that the Russians have Ukraine almost entirely surrounded. And now that war has broken out, it has the potential to unleash the most serious conflict seen in Europe since the Second

world war, and the biggest question on everybody's mind this entire time has been this: what exactly does Vladimir Putin and Russia want with Ukraine? And the answer is, of course, it's complicated. The origins of what Putin wants today are rooted in what happened more than three decades ago, back in the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union first collapsed. For centuries before this event, whether as part of the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire, the modern countries we know of today as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and others had all been a part of the same country, and their people had largely moved between all of them across generations. These places are all deeply and intimately connected by their shared history, and for decades, that history involves being widely recognized as one of the world's most dominant and formidable global superpowers. But all of that changed in late 1991 when suddenly the sweeping united empire that had existed in some form or another for centuries collapsed and left in its

place 15 newly independent republics. Today, the largest of them, Russia, has only half of the population that the former Soviet Union had, and she possesses an economy that's only moderately larger than Spain's, a country with only a third of the population that ceased being a great power back in the 18th century. At the same time, the massive amounts of territories that were once dominated from the central government in Moscow have been shrinking almost continuously ever since. During the Cold War, there were two rival competing military alliances on the European continent: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East. Moscow didn't outright rule the countries of the Warsaw Pact, but they were effectively locked into Moscow's orbit as thralls or puppet states. From Moscow's perspective, these states provided a massive buffer against any potential military incursion from their primary Cold War rivals to the West in NATO. You see from the Netherlands in the

west to the euro mountains in the east, this whole part of Europe is dominated by a geographic feature called the North European Plane. Almost entirely flat, the plane is shaped like a funnel with a very narrow width in northern Germany, but with a mouth that opens up increasingly wider as it approaches the Ural Mountains. As the open plane gets wider across the east, it becomes increasingly difficult to defend across its entire length. And as a result, from the perspective of any regime based in Moscow, regardless of the time period and regardless of the ideology, it is imperative to expand control westwards across as much of this open plane as possible in order to narrow the gap that they need to defend in the event of a conflict with the West. During the Cold War, the control of this plane by a regime in Moscow was at its greatest historical extent and was exerted either outright or by proxy from the Urals all the way through East Germany. And the entire wider section of the funnel was

firmly controlled by Moscow, with Austria and Finland remaining neutral, and Yugoslavia a non-aligned communist state. The only fronts that Moscow, at the time, had to truly worry about against NATO were across the Sudeten Mountains, the Black Sea, and a narrow line across the North European Plain in central Germany - all easily defensible positions. Any invasion of the Soviet world from the west across these geographic frontiers would have been incredibly difficult. But in the 30 years since 1991, the situation has changed dramatically against Moscow's favor. Today, the former Warsaw Pact territories of East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria are all a part of NATO, while the former Soviet republics themselves of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia all are as well. This reality has pushed the NATO front lines significantly further to the east across the wider section of the North European Plain and a separated Russian territory between the mainland and the Kaliningrad exclave. Here across

what's known as the Suvalky Gap. If you're sitting in the Kremlin in Moscow and you still believe that NATO is a hostile military alliance or could become one in the future, then this situation understandably looks pretty grim. But it's not totally lost yet. In the years following the breakup of the Soviet Union, many of the newly independent republics established and joined their own military alliance called the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, which in Europe consists of Russia, Belarus, and Armenia, but not Ukraine, which has remained a sort of neutral zone between NATO in the West and the CSTO in the East. And now, within this lens, you can easily see why Ukraine is currently and always will be a geographic core interest to Moscow. If Ukraine is within Moscow's orbit, then it pushes the CSTO's and Moscow's defensive lines to the Carpathian Mountains in the southwest, and it narrows their exposure across the North European Plain to only

the eastern border of Poland. And while the Baltic States do lie across the plain as well, CSTO forces could easily encircle them by rapidly advancing across the narrow Suvalky Gap between Kaliningrad and Belarus and cut them off from the rest of NATO, meaning that they aren't as grave of a geographical threat. Conversely, however, if Ukraine became a NATO member state, it would surge the NATO front lines far beyond the Carpathian Mountains and far across the wider section of the North European plane and place the new defensible front line across nearly 2,300 kilometers of open, hard to defend flat land. The easternmost section of which would only be a little more than 300 kilometers away from Volgograd, which if taken, would shut down the entire Volga River and cut off Russia's valuable oil and gas resources coming up from around the Caspian Sea from the rest of the country, as nearly happened during the Second World War, back when the city was better.

known as Stalingrad, even further, Belarus, a friendly and loyal CSTO state that is often considered a mere extension of Moscow itself, would suddenly become an indefensible salient protruding deep into the NATO front lines, surrounded entirely by NATO territory on three flanks. Thus, Ukraine's outright control by Moscow, or at least neutrality, is essential to the defense of the CSTO and Russia if you believe that NATO is a hostile aggressor or could become one in the future. But all of this is really only the beginning of what Russia and Putin want from Ukraine. The biggest thing they want of all is energy. While their overall economy is little larger than Spain's, Russia remains a global superpower through the lens of energy resources, and it's specifically oil and gas that is the most critical component to understand about Russia's worldwide ambitions. Across multiple vast oil fields, Russia is the world's second-largest producer of oil, ahead of even Saudi Arabia, while at the same time

russia also possesses the world's largest proven reserves of natural gas, largely across siberia, which has enabled russia to become the world's leading exporter of natural gas. The revenues gained from the sale of all these oil and gas exports are the literal foundation for the modern russian state and russian power, because they provide as much as 50 percent of the entire russian government's budget and represent about 30 percent of russia's entire gdp. russia has used the vast money earned from selling oil and gas abroad to fund their military, pay off debts, save cash, and finance its own restoration as a global great power. russia is therefore effectively a petrol state, just like saudi arabia or iran, and is the only petra state located in europe, at least for now. for you see, despite these massive geological blessings, they also come with a number of geographical catches. from moscow's perspective, most of their gas is sold off to the hungry customers in the

european union so much so that 35 of the eu's entire gas supply comes from russia alone. including germany the world's fourth largest economy who imports nearly half of their natural gas from russia. this flow of gas towards germany and europe across this complex system of pipelines provides critical revenues for the russian government to function. and provides critical heat for european cities during the winter. and so both sides heavily rely upon the other here. any disruption in this trade relationship would be disastrous from moscow's perspective. and ukraine is the most likely place for such a disruption to happen in the future. back during the soviet times when russia and ukraine were both one country. pipelines were built across ukraine almost like a bridge that transported gas directly from the siberian sources to the customers in europe. but then all of a sudden after the ussr's collapse. ukraine was an independent country who's demanding tariffs to the tune of billions of dollars a year from russia in order to continue using their country.

as a gas bridge to Europe, and Russia had no other choice but to agree because the pipeline infrastructure anywhere else didn't yet exist. As late as 2005, 80% of Russia's gas exports heading to Europe were still flowing across pipelines through Ukraine. But in the decades since, Russia has sought to solve this over-reliance on Ukraine by building multiple new pipelines that avoid Ukraine entirely, like Yamal-Europe across loyal Belarus, Nord Stream 1 and 2 beneath the Baltic that go directly from Russia to Germany, Moscow's largest single customer, along with South Stream, Blue Stream, and Turk Stream beneath the Black Sea. By 2024, Russia has plans to completely cease all of their gas exports through Ukraine entirely, and the government will save billions of dollars in tariffs as a result. But that is hardly what has been so threatening about Ukraine recently. Significantly more menacing to the perspective of Moscow was the discovery for the first time in early 2012 that Ukraine's

exclusive economic zone within the Black Sea may contain more than 2 trillion cubic meters worth of natural gas. Largely concentrated around the Crimean Peninsula. To make matters even more interesting, further technological advancements in the early 2010s that enabled the successful drilling of natural gas and oil from shale rock unlocked the potential shale gas hot spots for Ukraine around Donetsk and Kharkiv in the east and around the Carpathians in the west. Beginning in 2012, there was suddenly a very real possibility that almost out of nowhere, Ukraine had the world's 14th largest reserves of natural gas, just behind Australia and Iraq. But as a relatively poor country, Ukraine lacked the finances, the technology, or the equipment to successfully harvest any of these resources in any large quantities. But that all changed when shortly afterwards, the Ukrainian government began granting exploration and drilling rights to the likes of Shell and Exxon. It was suddenly possible that within a few years, these Western companies would enable Ukraine

to transform into Europe's second petro-state, which would have not only been a direct and serious competitor to Russia's own gas supply to the European Union, and thus at the same time a major threat to the Russian government's budget and GDP, but would have also provided the easy path of eventual Ukrainian admission into the European Union and NATO as well. And this is what's really, in my opinion, what this whole situation is truly about. In 2012, at the time when these discoveries were initially made, the man in charge of Ukraine was Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politician who is keeping Ukraine more politically aligned with the interests of Moscow. So long as he was president, these discoveries were not directly threatening to Russia. But when suddenly, in February 2014, his government was toppled in a pro-EU and pro-Western revolution in Kiev, Moscow was very quick to take the opportunity to invade some of Ukraine, seize the Crimean Peninsula.

and annex it in the name of historical claims and protecting ethnic Russians. But by seizing Crimea, the Russians also took direct control of two-thirds of Ukraine's coastline. And by extension, the vast majority of Ukraine's maritime exclusive economic zone. And most critically, an estimated 80 percent of Ukraine's potential offshore oil and gas reserves. In addition, billions of dollars worth of drilling equipment and other assets in the peninsula were seized by the Russians. All of which completely crippled the Ukrainian government's future potential to challenge Russia's gas supremacy in Europe. To make matters even worse from Ukraine's perspective, the areas of Ukraine that are the most rich in shale gas are located very near to the most major conflict zones encouraged and funded from Moscow with the Donetsk and Luhansk rebellions here and the Transnistria breakaway republic in Moldova over here. Which in my view is not a coincidence. As a result, Shell and Exxon both backed out from all

of their contracts with the Ukrainian government shortly afterwards, leaving Ukraine with no capability to extract the remaining resources themselves, and no capability to challenge Russia's occupation of Crimea. From the perspective of Putin and his regime, these were all mandatory actions to take in order to curb a western-oriented Ukraine from ever selling major supplies of gas to Europe that would threaten his own regime's primary source of wealth and power. Ukraine had to be dismembered to protect himself and the other oligarchs who are in power. But there's more: under Putin, Russia can't ever give Crimea back to Ukraine because it would surrender the entire exclusive economic zone and all of the gas resources within it back, along with the strategic port city of Sevastopol, one of the very few year-round ice-free ports that the Russian navy can use and needs to operate throughout the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. If Crimea was ever returned to Ukraine and Ukraine joined

nato. They would regain their ability to threaten the Russian government's primary source of revenue, and the Russian navy's most geostrategically valuable port would be lost forever. But Ukraine has some pressure that it can and has been applying itself. Naturally speaking, the geography of Crimea is that it's almost an island, only loosely connected to the rest of Europe and covered by dry and arid steppes and some salty marshes, with very little fresh water for people or agriculture. Prior to the Russian invasion and annexation, the vast majority of Crimea's fresh water supply, like 85% of it, came down into the peninsula from a canal built during the Soviet era that diverted water from the Dnieper River. But after the Russians took it over in 2014, the Ukrainians weren't exactly in the mood to continue sending down the water, and they filled up the canal within their remaining borders to the north with cement and blocked the flow of all this water down into the now

Russian occupied Crimea. As a result, Crimea has ever since been essentially dying a death from a thousand cuts as it steadily recedes back into the dry and arid steppe of history. While modern climate change is only making everything even worse, as 2020 was the driest year ever on record in Crimea since recordkeeping began 150 years ago. As a result, the Russian government is struggling to maintain its hold. The capital city, Simferopol's reservoir, is today less than seven percent full, and the city has been having to ration water supplies. Even after the Russians built a nearly four billion dollar bridge across the Kerch Strait here to connect the peninsula over to the Russian mainland, shipping in water is difficult, and life for the more than 2 million people on the peninsula is getting harder after the annexation, not better. The Russian government is having to spend billions of dollars a year to financially prop up Crimea, and it's largely all because of this canal being shut down by the

ukrainians over on the other side, and Ukraine is obviously not in any kind of mood to open it back up again. As a result, the current crisis in Ukraine can also be seen through the lens of climate and water conflict, and it's one of the biggest reasons why Russia is doing what it's doing now. The current Prime Minister of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, has stated on multiple occasions that the primary goal going forward for the Ukrainian nation is the reclamation of the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Currently, Ukraine has no realistic capability to challenge the overwhelmingly more powerful and capable Russian military, but in the future, where Ukraine to join NATO and a murky conflict breaks out between themselves and Russia over Crimea or in the eastern rebel-occupied Donbass where it may be unclear who started it, it's hypothetical that Ukraine could trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that, If a NATO ally is the victim of an armed

attack each and every other member of the alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members, and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the ally attacked. Therefore, in the future, the fear of those in power in the Kremlin is that Ukraine will bring in the rest of NATO to fight Russia in taking back Crimea, and that is a war then Moscow knows it will lose. Not only because of NATO's much more advanced military capabilities, but because of Russia's own internal demographic problems. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's deaths have exceeded her births, well, the nation's fertility rate has been among the lowest in the world, and so the country's population has been shrinking almost continuously ever since. But since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, the shrinking population problem has only gotten even worse, and Russia is currently undergoing its largest peacetime decline in people ever in all of recorded history, even worse than during the 1990s right after the Soviet

collapse. Right now, Russia has around 25 million men within the country who are of military service age. But the government knows that as time continues on, that potential pool of manpower is only going to get smaller and smaller. Therefore, it could be reasoned behind the inner walls of the Kremlin that the longer Russia waits to act upon Ukraine, the more difficult it is going to become in the future. And so, the earlier, the better. Now, by occupying Crimea and by maintaining conflicts in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, Russia has so far succeeded in keeping Ukraine out of NATO. And by building up troops along the border and hosting joint military exercises in Belarus, Moscow is further able to signal to Ukraine that they are in danger, which can panic investors in the Ukrainian government and damage the economy even further, and which forces Ukraine to spend even more money on their own military and defense, taking away vital cash that they could be using to further develop their own natural gas.

infrastructure, and of course, Russia has been fueling a war inside of Ukraine in the east now for years. Ever since 2014, that has greatly depleted the Ukrainian government's time, manpower, and resources. After being taken over by pro-Russian separatists following Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea, both Donetsk and Luhansk declared their independence from Ukraine eight years ago. And after being supported financially and militarily from Russia, have continuously been fighting a war against the Ukrainian government ever since that has already claimed the lives of more than 14,000 people. For years, most of the territory of each has been controlled by the Ukrainian government, but just a few days ago, Russia for the first time officially recognized both as fully independent countries separate from Ukraine and deployed their troops into each. Right now, as I made this video, it's still unclear what exactly Putin is ultimately planning for Ukraine. He may only be plotting a limited strike into

the country in order to permanently sever both Donetsk and Luhansk from the country, as he did with Crimea eight years previously, and effectively occupy each. He may also be plotting a further limited strike from Crimea in order to neutralize the block in the canal, in order to free up Crimea's struggling water supply. He may be planning to go further, though, to ensure that this situation never happens again and push Russian territory all the way to at least some of the Dnieper River, to simultaneously stabilize Crimea's geographic position by freeing up the water supply, deny even more of Ukraine's coastline and access to natural gas reserves, and set up a stronger potential defensive line against any attack from the west along the Dnieper River's banks. Alternatively, he may also be planning a southern takeover of Ukraine, which would simultaneously bring Donetsk and Luhansk into Russia, link up Crimea with the Dnieper River, and the canal, block off

ukraine from the rest of the black sea and transform the country into a landlocked state. Permanently removed from any remaining offshore gas deposits and link up mainland Russian territory with both Crimea and loyal Transnistria in the west. Or he may really be planning an all-out assault to take over the entire country. So it's to guarantee that Russia and the CSTO's defensive lines against NATO are pushed further back towards the more narrow opening of the North European plane between the Carpathian Mountains and the Baltic Sea across the border of Poland. And in so doing, guaranteeing that Ukraine will never be used against them and that Belarus will never become an indefensible salient. From their Russian provocations into Moldova are almost a certainty next. Another former Soviet state who isn't a member of NATO and conveniently already has a pro-Russian breakaway state that Russia will eventually get around to recognizing as well: Transnistria. It's all a part of

Putin's repeatedly stated goal of bringing back the old Soviet and Russian Empire for the 21st century. Now that Putin has chosen to invade, it's not entirely clear what's happening as the facts on the ground are rapidly developing. But what is clear are Putin's demands. He has demanded that the West agree to three main terms: one, that Ukraine never be allowed to join the NATO alliance; two, the NATO and the United States withdraw all of their armed forces from Eastern Europe back to the pre-1997 boundaries of NATO, ending in Germany, effectively abandoning Poland, the Baltic states, and much of the rest of Eastern Europe; and three, NATO and America agree to freeze the NATO alliance as is and rule out any future expansion of new members, and that the alliance will not hold any military drills in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, or in the Caucasus without prior Russian consent. The West and NATO, of course, will

never accept any of these terms, and Putin must know this. But through the lenses of geographic security, the economics of oil and gas, the changing climate, the shortage of water in Crimea, and Russia's own sensitive internal demographic crisis, it's clear to see what Russia's primary concerns are with Ukraine. And only time will tell how Russia and Vladimir Putin act upon those concerns. But by analyzing how Putin has acted before during times of crisis, we can likely figure out how he'll act again in the future. The recognition of both Donetsk and Luhansk as independent countries and the deployment of Russian troops into both before launching the full-scale invasion across the entire country next mirrors a striking uncanny resemblance to exactly what Putin and the Russian government did against Georgia 14 years previously back in 2008. Back then, the Russian army invaded the country of Georgia in what would ultimately become the first European war of the 21st century. Two pro-Russian

breakaway provinces inside of Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, were each recognized by Russia as fully separate and independent countries. And then, by using the pretext of Georgian occupation of both, Russia deployed troops into both and from there initiated a full-scale land, sea, and air invasion across the rest of Georgia. Across the 12 days of intense fighting that followed, the Russians occupied both Abkhazia and South Ossetia within Georgia, solidified their de facto independence, and effectively dismembered the country, displacing nearly 200,000 people and causing Georgia to sever all diplomatic relations with Russia. However, it was in the end a decisive victory for Russia and for Vladimir Putin as it kept Georgia from joining NATO and at a time when NATO and the West were more distracted by the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. There was little international attention, let alone condemnation. It would only be less than

six years later, when Putin would deploy the exact same kinds of tactics that he used against Georgia, against Ukraine in Crimea and the Donbass. And now, in 2022, it once again appears that history is repeating itself in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Ukraine. Without a doubt, the Russian invasion of Georgia is absolutely critical to understanding how Putin's modern military strategy of dismemberment works, and in understanding what he might ultimately plan to do with Ukraine. But unfortunately, if I made a video about it on YouTube, it's a guarantee that it would get demonetized and age restricted. And as a result, there's simply no way that you would ever see it. So instead, I created yet another full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that's about the exact same length as this video was, that covers the entire course of the Russian invasion of Georgia from beginning to end, and uploaded it directly to Nebula, which as you've probably heard by now, is home to

tons of exclusive ad-free content like my entire modern conflict series with 10 other additional full-length episodes with more than three hours of additional content that you can go and watch right now. Including this 26-minute long video that I made earlier about the entire history and course of the modern conflict between Ukraine and Russia, covering everything from the breakup of the Soviet Union to the invasion and annexation of Crimea, and the ongoing war and battles in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. There are plenty of other episodes too that I've produced that cover the battle of Aleppo in Syria, the wars of Saddam Hussein, the United States-Iran conflict, and much, much more. Of course, the reason why all of these videos are only available on Nebula is because they just wouldn't ever work on YouTube and would never be viewed here because of the way that this site works. On the other hand, Nebula is a different platform without an algorithm and without any ads. It's just a platform.

about great and unique content made by great and independent educational creators, with plenty of other unique exclusive bonus projects from other creators you probably already know, like the Battle of Britain and Logistics of D-Day series from Real Engineering, and plenty of hour-plus long documentary specials from Wendover Productions, along with so many others. The best way to get access to Nebula and all of this incredible content is definitely through the amazing Curiosity Stream Nebula bundle deal. And with its current sales price, it's less than $15 a year to get full complete access to everything on both sides. Curiosity Stream has some phenomenal stuff that you're definitely going to enjoy as well, like Apocalypse Stalin, a three-part documentary series that's nearly three hours long, that covers the entire history of Joseph Stalin from early obscurity through World War II to ruling over one of the world's two global superpowers armed with nuclear weapons. If you want to see a documentary explaining how the Cold War began and who Joseph Stalin was, then this is the

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Why Russia is Invading Ukraine

Why Russia is Invading Ukraine