Russian troops massing on the Ukraine boarder have been the news everyday since early December. Stock video clips are on the TV network news shows of Russian tanks on maneovers, Sukhoi fighter jets, and garrisons of equipment. Speculation, speculation and more speculation. Ukraine has never asked to join NATO. In fact all that Ukraine has ever done to Russia was to stop being part of the old USSR.

Therein lies the first of three real issues. Putin does not recognize that Ukraine is a truly independent nation. To him it is, as it has always been, the number one satellite state in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. That the USSR disappeared in the early 1990s is not relevant. Ukraine is a satellite nation of Russia.

To allow Ukraine to be fully independent acknowledges the second real issue. In Putin's mind the US and its NATO allies do not consider Russia to be a true Superpower any longer. Many in the US and NATO are more focused on China's military and look at it as the up-an-coming Superpower... Not Russia. Russia's fall from the ranks of Superpower happened when it withdrew it's troops from Afghanistan. Putin believes that with the American withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the US is no longer the singular great Superpower.

Finally, along these lines, Putin does not believe that NATO is united in its goals. He thinks that after Trumps presidency, it is weaker and less united than at any earlier time. He thinks he can get away with defying the US and NATO. He doesn't think that Europe will impose the cripling sanctions that President Biden is proposing. He doesn't think the Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline project to Northern Europe will be terminated if Russia invades. He thinks the Germans and other Western European NATO members have grown fat and rich while addicted to Russian gas and other resources and won't give them up. He thinks that NATO will fall apart if this happens.

Putin's goal is to return Russia to it's former glory.